Eddie - Housebroken: confessions of a stay-at-home dad

Copyright 1999 by David Eddie

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 1999 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Eddie, David
Housebroken: confessions of a stay-at-home dad

eISBN: 978-0-307-36904-8

1. Househusbands Ontario Toronto. 2. Father and child.
I. Title.

HQ 756.6. E 32 1999 305.3364092 C99-931441-6

Too Tired by Maxwell Davis, Sam Ling and John Watson
Copyright 1955 & 1983 Powerforce Music (BMI)

v3.1

CONTENTS

TEN Towards a Possible Redefinition
of Machismo

Im too tired, too tired for anything.

Johnny Guitar Watson

When do you write? a lot of people ask when they find out Im a househusband and stay-at-home dad.

Well, its tricky and complicated. My wife, Pam, is a TV news reporter/anchor. She reports Monday to Wednesday and anchors on the weekends. She has Thursdays and Fridays off, so I work those days. On Tuesday mornings my mother, recently retired, looks after our son Nicholas (whos two as I write this). On Wednesdays our part-time nanny, Audrey, comes in for four hours, from 9:30 to 1:30.

Its a patchwork arrangement, like most peoples these days. We didnt exactly plan it this way; it evolved. From chaos I have wrestled six mornings a week to write, and Im grateful. But still, it never seems like enough. All my competition seems to be gay, single, childless or else has the wherewithal to keep their kids in deep background. Meanwhile Im all too aware were paying someone eight dollars an hour, or my mothers taking time from the sweet bliss of retirement, or Pam is looking after him on her day offall so I can noodle around in my office seeking le mot juste or flat-out procrastinating (ironing shirts, reading a magazine or novel, chatting on the phone).

I write at top speed, in a festering stew of guilt, with distraction bombs going off outside my door every few minutes like fireworks at a patriotic display. Right now, for example, Audreys changing Nicholass diaper not five feet from my door. Hes screaming, crying and carrying on. No doubt Ill be checking the situation out very soon (Im not sure which is more distracting, his crying or his musical laughter). In fact, excuse me, I should probably check it out right now.

Its nothing; hes just tired. My point, gentle reader (and still gentler purchaser! as Byron would say), is I dont have time and anyway Im too tired to adopt a fake persona or embroider my writing with little faux-poetic prose-doilies, as seems to be the current fashion. I want to portray life as it is and myself as a human being, warts and all, as they say. Not only warts, but dandruff, halitosis and hemorrhoids (at least I hope theyre hemorrhoids. I havent been able to bring myself to ask a doctor to check it out). The unvarnished, rarely vacuumed truth, in other words. With Nicholas on the scene, the urge is stronger than ever. Hes going to read this someday. Am I going to lie to him? Allow me to quote Michel de Montaigne, the great sixteenth-century French essayist, in support of my sentiments:

This book was written in good faith, reader. It warns you from the outset that in it I have set myself no goal but a domestic and private one. If I had written to seek the worlds favor, I should have bedecked myself better, and should present myself in a studied posture. I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray. My defects will here be read to the life, and also my natural form, as far as respect for the public has allowed.

Of course, as with all memoirs, you have to remember that memory is filtered through the imagination: the action, dialogue and internal monologue in this book are all reproduced as I imagine I remember them, or as I remember imagining them. Also, Ive changed the names and some biographical details of some of the characters, mostly at their requests.

One obvious irony of this book is that at times I had to be a lousy househusband and bad dad in order to write it, especially towards the end. And it was only thanks to Pams willingness to do double duty and eat lots of pizza and takeout that I could get it done at all. Without her, this book would be an anecdote and a couple of aphorisms; so it goes without saying its dedicated to her. But I couldnt have done it without my mother, either, who came in to pinch hit more times than I can count. So: to my wife and my mother.

Youre doing a good job, the guy behind the counter at the butchers shop says.

Thats funny; it sure doesnt feel like it. Nicholas is six months old. Pams been back to work for a month. Im pretty new at this and very shaky. Ive lost his pacifier (again); hes fussing and squirmingon the verge of a major tantrum, I can tell, complete with tomato-red face and hot tears streaming down his cheeksand the strollers blocking traffic in the long, narrow store. Though its four in the afternoon, hes still in his sleep-suit, same one he wore yesterday, the front festooned with crusty food. Earlier a woman stopped me in the street and said something over and over again in Chinese, fingering the sleeves of his outfit.

Im sorry, I dont understand you. I dont understand what youre saying, I kept telling her. But I was lying. I knew perfectly well what she was saying. In the universal language of interfering busybodies and tsk-tsking babushkas everywhere, she was saying, Your baby cold. Needs another layer. You bad dad. You very, very bad dad.

I feel, in fact, like I have BAD DAD tattooed on my forehead as I jam a carton of homo milk between his lips, trying to get him to drink from the spout, teenager-style. It works, sort of: he drinks greedily, hungrily, like a neglected orphan-boy, the milk coursing down his cheeks and soaking the front of his PJs.

Thanks, I tell the butcher. Could I have a boneless pork roast, please?

Youve probably seen us around: huge, hulking brutes, some of us, stubbled, troubled, humbled, baffled and hassled, pushing strollers down the street, shopping carts down the aisle or swings in the park. Every day there are more of us. Were househusbands; hear us roar!

I never meant to become one, of course. I dont think many young men wake up in the middle of the night thinking, Now I know what I want to be in life! A househusband and stay-at-home dad! But who knows? Maybe someday that will change. Obviously were in the middle of a revolution in the workplace. A recent study by the Families and Work Institute in New York suggests that women now earn more than half the income in 45 percent of the households in the United States. If you factor in single, divorced and widowed women, you could say that women earn more than half the money in more than half the households in America. Maybe someday there will be a corollary revolution in the home, and boys will grow up dreaming of staying home to take care of the kids.