I thought I was done raising young children. I'd been a single dad since Chet, my littlest one was just eight months old and his big sister Ava was three and a half. I'd blogged about it, written a book about it, congratulated myself on what a faithful parental servant I'd been to them, and now that they are of school age I get a thrill commanding them to unload the dishwasher, take out the trash or make their beds. I had started imagining the day when I could just toss them a twenty and say, "Be home before midnight."
And then I fell desperately in love with a woman and her eighteen-month-old heartbreaker.
Like Al Pacino in Godfather III, I suddenly said to myself: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." I'm telling you, before falling in love with Amanda and Maia, I could see the finish line. A time in the near future when I could go to the movies without factoring in an extra sixty bucks for a sitter. When my single friends from my former hipster days blew into town unannounced and invited me on some fabulous adventure that night, and I could instantly say yes.
As part of our divorce mediation my ex-wife and I had agreed to a "six-month rule." We'd have to date someone six months, be positive that they would be a significant part of any future plans, before introducing them to our kids. Amanda and I started dating around the Super Bowl, introduced the kids to each other around Father's Day and were all living together in my New York City apartment by Labor Day.
For me, diapers were the biggest reminder that it was déjà vu all over again. The first time Amanda asked me to change Maia she said, "Are you sure you still remember?"
In the first six-months after my then wife moved out I was changing both kids, often at the same time.
Remember? Ava stayed in diapers late. With the dissolution of my marriage I wasn't about to push her. The result was that in the first six-months after my then wife moved out I was changing both kids, often at the same time. By the end I felt like one of those master pizza pie throwers or circus plate spinners, or maybe a Benihana chef. When I changed diapers I should have charged admission to watch me. That was just four years ago. Of course I still remembered. And then my memory was put to the test.
"Um, is the big picture of Dora supposed to be on the back or the front?"
I'd forgotten everything. Maia just looked up at me, as if saying, "Is my mommy really in love with this idiot?" Then that oddly sweet smell re-invaded my brain and suddenly my past life came bubbling back to me. I held her fat little legs together and high in the air with one hand as if she were a freshly plucked turkey and I remembered that for a girl I had to wipe front to back. A fingertip full of Desitin, Velcro the wings shut, a quick tap on the butt and she was off again, wobbly race-walking back to play with the big kids.
"Ava's daddy," she murmured as she careened away.
"Chet's daddy," Chet corrected her, as he does dozens of times a day, to no avail.
