October 13, 2009

Carver,

Today is your first day in full-time, regular daycare. It’s a hard day for me, and probably is for you too. Up until now you have spent a handful of days in “backup” daycare, but aside from those few days you’ve spent everyday with your mom or me. You also spend many of your weekday afternoons with your “G-Ma,” who takes you to the park and gives you baths and you generally clearly love. Your G-Ma’s willingness to watch you most afternoons (and it seems to be more of a legitimate happiness than a mere willingness) has been quite possibly a literal lifesaver for me.

Unfortunately, or so I feel, I seem to need more help than your G-Ma’s tremendously generous and extremely appreciated assistance. So your mother and I have decided to send you to full-time daycare. Ultimately, I believe that this is in your best interest. But it’s still hard.

One of the reasons we decided to put you in regular daycare is that we think you’ve reached the age where you should make some friends and socialize with other babies. In your experiences in backup daycare and at the park you really seem to enjoy hanging out with other kids. We think you’ll like having some regular buddies to play with.

Another reason we’re doing this is that I simply don’t seem to have what it takes to be a top-notch stay-at-home parent. This makes me sad and makes me feel like a failure. I truly believe that your new teachers, professional child care providers, will do a better job at interacting with you regularly and feeding you well-balanced meals and all sorts of other things that I think you need. I wish I was better at this for you, I really do, but it’s become clear that I am not. I think the daycare is the best place for you right now.

My goal for myself now is to figure out what I’m doing, both professionally and generally, to try to sort out my life and attain some personal happiness. I’m drifting now, and it isn’t good. My goal is for you too, for I feel like in the end it is in your best interest to have a happy father, a father in whom you can be confident, a father you can be happy about having. It’s my goal for us.

This morning, as we were getting ready to go, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth as you were standing there just outside the doorway, happy. You turned and noticed something out of my view; you ran to it and came running back with a ball in your hand. You held that ball up and cackled with absolute glee. You tossed the ball toward me, still laughing and smiling, and I thought about how you were the greatest, happiest, most awesome baby ever to have lived. It was a lovely thought, but it was immediately followed by a concern that perhaps daycare will have a negative effect on you, that you won’t like it and will become an unhappy baby—i.e., that my failure to be able to care for you every day will hurt you into losing your joy. I hope that’s not the case, I have faith that it won’t be the case—if I didn’t truly think that you’d be fine I wouldn’t be doing this—but it still worries me and makes me sad. Perhaps I could take some solace in the fact that in the time you’ve stayed home with me you have been a very happy and very capable baby, ahead of the curve on nearly every mark. But I don’t, because I love you and I don’t see the value in consoling myself; my only concern is what’s best for you.

The few times you’ve been in backup daycare you’ve totally freaked out when you realized that I was leaving you there. As soon as we arrived you’d hang on tight and hold yourself as close to me as you could, clutching with more strength than I knew you had, looking suspiciously at the daycare ladies (they’re always ladies). When I left you’d scream and sob and chase after me—it was heartbreaking every time. I don’t understand your baby brain enough to know what you felt this morning, but I hope you know that I did it because I love you—that at some point you’ll know that I only did it because I love you, that I love you more than anything and everything combined, and I only did it because I think it’s the best thing for you.

Papa