This poem (thank you, Cleaver), “[My wife needed a second child and I did not.],” is a poem about raw feelings, a moment in life where one is exhausted with failure from trying to expand a family. We live in a world in which men are perceived, often, as needing to show emotion and be vulnerable. The world doesn’t always like what they hear, though, including us, as men.
I was satisfied with one child. Parenting is exhausting, especially when you are a man who does not give in to being the stereotypical hands-off role of being “babysitter.” My sons are and always be a part of me, and my role is to help guide them to successful men, with emotions and vulnerability. I am part of teaching them how to cook, clean, do laundry, cry. Process the world. I was an adjunct teaching at three colleges in the DMV in the hours when my wife was not at her full-time teaching job an hour away. I was up in middle of nights, singing our older boy back to bed with “Lean on Me” and “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” at 3am. I was there in the morning, coddling him, changing his explosive poops. I was there, watching Wild Kratts and teaching him phonemes.
So I didn’t need a second child. He was named for my father, my golden Goose, my wing man, and our first pregnancy took one month of trying. Boom. With our second son, it took years. Years of failure, of feeling like failures as both man and woman, feeling inadequate. My wife really wanted a second child, and I wanted a second child for her and for the theory of it all. I was worried about splitting my love. How can one love more than one already does? I asked my sister: “How can I love more than I already do?” She was right: you will.
Four years went by. They prepared us for a miscarriage when we finally conceived our second child. Two weeks in Spring, the doctor gave us eyes down looks, broke off her explanations of the next step, and I truly thank her for never once uttering that he may not be alive inside of my wife anymore. Not the OB, not the nurses.
After two weeks of very dour testing, of not hearing him on the in-clinic ultrasounds, of having her hormones tested not having the growth in levels associated with life growing, the OB sent us to a specialist. A nice Indian man that reminded me of one of my best friend’s uncles. He talked of his sister, how she had five straight miscarriages before having five straight children. As he told us this story, our insides were tearing apart. We knew why he was telling us this story. He immediately stopped when he found the heartbeat. A complete 180. Joy and a little of that, “Oh, beta (beh-tuh, for all my white friends), why were you worried? He’s right there, don’t worry” you get from your elders.
This poem was written years and years into the life of our little fighter. It’s a poem in which I was so far removed from those years that I could admit: I was ready to stop trying. I did not need a second child. But it is a poem, and in a poem, dear reader, you need to realize what is not said.
I wanted a second child. I wanted this boy who turns ten in a few days. This fighter. This fierce child whose story has made up so much of my manuscript Dear Irreverence, trying to find a home. This boy who made me pray for him my first prayers since my own childhood, wanting a father, wanting to live.
[MY WIFE NEEDED A SECOND CHILD AND I DID NOT.]
My wife needed a second child and I did not.
It did not stop my wanting to please her
and it did not stop me from the years of wanting
our monthly disappointment to end: wearing,
the awkward bar jokes about an abundance of sex
as consolation. Have you ever had the large bucket
of fries from the Ocean City pier? Hand-cut,
salted frivolity, the crisp skin and grease
that keeps you walking the planks and staring
into little seasonal shops and deciding if
you need to buy a shirt that says you’ve been here
instead of the city a little farther north in Delaware
or the city a little south of the ponies. Sex on a beach,
I imagine, would satisfy less than this bucket of fries,
or the same—both leave you to chastise yourself
in the moment for building up the need
to keep going until the bucket is empty, the bottom
a greasy Rorschach.