One day I woke up and I wasn’t a stay-at-home Dad anymore.
In the interest of allowing our daughter to realize her full potential, my wife and I decided to pull her out of the elementary school she’d been attending since kindergarten – a school that did not challenge her at all – and enroll her in the district where my wife taught. It was my suggestion, and it was not made without significant inner turmoil. I knew that if she switched districts, I’d no longer be needed to drop her off and pick her up. I’d have to figure out a new day-to-day purpose.
While I’d initially been hesitant to embrace the role of stay-at-home Dad, for ten years it was almost all I knew. It had been the largest part of who I was for nearly as long as I could remember. I deeply enjoyed forging a close relationship with my daughter that I otherwise might not have. Above all, I was very comfortable in that role. It suited me. But suddenly I found myself once again at the precipice of a complete overhaul of my identity and my very life.
I recall the day years earlier when my wife and I went to something that can probably best be described as a preschool fair, i.e. a place where representatives from various preschools promote their institutions to the parents of prospective students. I went through all the expected emotions and had all the expected thoughts, most of them along the lines of “I can’t believe my baby girl is already starting school!” There was also a trace of “Am I really okay leaving my child with strangers?”
But there were also feelings of dread related to my sense of purpose. For the first time ever, my daughter was going to be out of my custody on a regular basis. Granted, the first year she was only in school two hours a day a couple days a week, but in my mind I needed to immediately find some means of justifying the oxygen I was drawing into my lungs during that time. If I wasn’t actively parenting my child, what good was I?
I had four hours a week to myself. After three years spent parenting a young child almost around the clock, this level of solitude was unfathomable. I couldn’t imagine how many weeks it would take me just to get used to the idea of being alone for that long. But I knew I couldn’t afford to dwell on it; I’d need to find a part-time job that could accommodate my limited schedule. Otherwise my family would surely resent me for being a freeloader.
I know none of this is realistic. Two hours of solitude a day twice a week isn’t enough time to handle laundry, dishes, and the myriad other things I couldn’t get around to on the typical weekday, let alone steady employment. Hell, two hours of solitude twice a week wouldn’t have been enough time to catch up on the sleep I lost since becoming a parent. But in my mind, if I wasn’t with my daughter, I needed something to show for my time more significant than clean bathrooms, spotless dishes, and folded laundry. Remember what I said about my parents inadvertently conditioning me to equate my worth with my income? This is how that lesson manifests itself.
Obviously I didn’t get a four-hour-a-week job. But over the next few years I helped out in my daughter’s preschool class as often as my social anxiety permitted. It wasn’t always easy, but it allowed me to feel good about myself and to feel like I was contributing in a small way. In addition, it allowed me to see her occasionally on school days, which mitigated the separation anxiety. Also, helping out in her class made me truly appreciate the solitude I experienced on days when I didn’t, because anything beyond like four or five kids at a time is overwhelming. I don’t know how my wife does it.
While it is in my nature to overextend myself for the people I love, and while I enjoyed and continue to enjoy spending time with my daughter simply because she’s wonderful, it has occurred to me that I might have helped out in her classroom and chaperoned almost every field trip specifically because I knew the situation was finite. Perhaps on some level I was banking credit, doing as much as I could with her even when she was in school because I figured when she started getting rides from friends or otherwise didn’t need them from me, I’d have a tough time justifying my existence.
If that theory is accurate, I kind of wish I’d known then that all the good will I’d tried to accumulate over the years didn’t last.
Up next: Treat Yourself, wherein I examine a possible root cause of my loss of identity and geek out about Star Wars. It’ll make sense in context, trust me.