Glitterbugs: How One Father Picked Up the Pieces After Becoming a Single Dad — Twice (Exclusive)

Again? How was I going to repeat this?

When my first wife died after a nearly three-year battle with cancer, I became a single father. I was stripped to the bone, financially on fumes and became solely responsible for little girl Lily, just days before her third birthday. Obviously, this was a brutal situation, but over the next two years, Lily and I – with the support of family, friends and therapists – found ways to help and inspire each other; we made our little family bond—sometimes spectacularly—in a tiny but rent-stabilized one-bedroom in Manhattan.

‘I’ll Do It Better: A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love’ by Charles Bock.

Abrams

When Lily was five years old, miracle of miracles, I was hit again by the sledgehammer of love. A quick wedding in Vegas preceded our move to a posh part of Brooklyn. My new and younger wife was determined to have a child. Lily desperately wanted a mother and was thrilled at the prospect of becoming a sister. And here, here is my chance to experience a more traditional kind of fatherhood.

But four years later my second wife left me. I became a single father again, with no more financial resources than I had before, with an even greater sense of loss and two girls this time.

One experience of rebuilding my life was more than enough for me. Now, on the cusp of 50, I’ve found a sad cliché, looking for one of those depressing starter apartments abandoned middle-aged fathers end up in, raising Lily, now 9, on my own and — especially on those nights when it’s my turn to co-parent — I also took care of my one-year-old daughter, Ione.

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As devastated as I felt, I also realized that time was passing. I firmly understood how important it is to be a good parent for the baby, providing a strong bond with it. I would only have her two nights a week, and not back-to-back nights, but I certainly had enough experience raising a girl to not only handle fatherhood, but delight in those mediated times together. Plus, we had my sidekick, Lily, riding shotgun.

True, Lily had to thoroughly process the departure of another mother figure; anyway she would have that oft-requested opportunity to be a big sister. And the little one would grow up relying on her dad and appreciating her sister. This is what I wanted, what I expected.

Lily and Ione were reading together in the sisters’ bedroom.

Courtesy of Charles Bock

In the dark before dawn, when I could keep my mind from spinning in an alternate universe where I wasn’t doing this Han Solo thing, I was coming up with plans for me and the girls, schemes about how to organize our hours. I’m not a taskmaster, I don’t believe in charts, and I’m too lax about cleaning to force my kids to do chores, so my ideas weren’t draconian. Yet there had to be ways to make simple responsibilities fun and to devise meal and sleep rituals by sprinkling them with stardust.

We don’t want to be bugs. We want to be glitterbugs.

Adding letters, great plan. Still, I managed to turn my life with Lily into something special and even occasionally wonderful. I was determined to perform the same magic trick with two children.

So the rebuilding begins. True, the passage I found for us was above a 99 cent store and along Industrial Street. Eighteen wheels rumbled by at all hours, and a mass of homeless people camped down the street. But the space had plenty of light, a cavernous living room, a stack of cabinets in the kitchen area, and full bedrooms at opposite ends—the kind of arrangement ideal for adventurous art students.

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For a dad thinking about his little one (we’ll be just two subway stops from Ione’s other neighborhood) and his 9-year-old (a 20-minute bus ride to the charter school where she’ll soon start sixth grade) and his sanity (lots of space meant we wouldn’t be on top of each other without salvation), there were pragmatic appeals. And across the street, a huge 24-hour grocery store was shaped like an open-air bazaar, strung with multi-colored lights and overflowing with crates of exotic vegetables and bright fruits.

Lily chose the larger bedroom to be the sisters’ room. She was looking at the boulevard, and the ovals with nines on the store’s marquee peeked into the window next to her bed. In the hollow plastic of the arched signs, we found bird’s nests made from twigs and shredded take-out menus, Cheetos bags, zig-zag boxes and bird bones. Strange and poor, of course, but also a little bad. Above the bed, Lily pinned posters from her after school theater programs. At the other end of that room, I set up a crib for Iona out of white slats I got off Craigslist. I covered his mattress with a clean sheet that fits me. A bunch of stuffed animals came in, including a giant Minnie Mouse with Ione’s name on it embroidered on the base, a gift Lily paid for with her pocket money.

I pushed a wire basket full of our dirty clothes across the cracked and uneven pavement, Lily pushing Ione in her stroller right behind me, our wobbly parade headed for the laundromat. At the entrance they had one of those ancient arcade games where you put in a quarter and try to push the money over the edge. We threw in change and cheered for jackpots that never arrived, drawing stares from people waiting for their laundry to dry. When a few coins fell down, Lily screamed, Ione stared, surprised, then raised her hands and jubilant as well.

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I gave them to the local Carvel for individual spoons and sprinkles. I set them on a mechanical horse outside the barber shop, pumped up into quarters. Sometimes the horse really vibrated. We ventured out to visit various Bangladeshi bakeries for Rossi, until the girls decided they would rather eat sweets. I made them popcorn for Disney videos in the microwave, spent money I couldn’t afford on pizzas that nobody ate. I sang to them, changing the lyrics to the 1980s hip hop classic Whodini, “The Freaks Come Out at Night,” repeating it so much that both my daughters started singing along, when pisces get together, to go out in the evening, they like to wear leather jackets, chains and spikes.

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Sometimes love and happiness were spontaneously born around my plans to make it happen. Here is Ione, dark curls, pale skin, lips parted, her eyes asking a question, flashing with glee at the answer. Here she is jumping on Lily’s bed. Here they are with helium balloons and stuffed animals from the 99-9 cent store. Lily snuggles up to Ione, reads from The library lion, Ganesha’s sweet tooth and A visitor for Bearsome of the same books I read to her when she was that age.

And Lily was in the game to a point: she wanted to be in a relationship with her sister until she did; then she had to be alone until she wandered back to be part of our group. In contrast, I had to entertain and feed Ione while making sure to give Lily the love and landing spot she needed.

It’s almost bedtime. Ione in his overalls. Dimmed lights, a special kaleidoscopic lamp that casts colors and shapes transforming the walls and ceiling of their bedroom. I started singing the lyrics to Feist’s cover of Sesame Street, a favorite of both parents and children: one two three four, monsters walk the floor.

Ione and Lily in front of a glowing glowing toy.

Courtesy of Charles Bock

Ione clapped, started marching

But something on Lily’s face – did she think that song was something protected? I sang it to her countless times in bed, we both enjoyed it the chickens have just returned from the coast. Was she jealous of the attention Ione was getting? Was she possessive of me?

“I have homework to do,” she said.

Ione’s face froze. “Lily?”

“I can’t,” Lily said.

You could see how the younger sister doesn’t understand, she adores her big sister so much, how she melts. Total rage mode.

Then one morning I was about to take Ione back to her neighborhood, so I turned to lock the front door and grab the stroller, and Ione, who was halfway down the stairs, rolled down the last four, bruising her face.

And then one night she successfully climbed out of her crib and fell three feet to the floor and screamed.

One afternoon Lily was in a bad mood, pushed past Iona and accidentally knocked her over the door.

All the while the plea of ​​the little one – sometimes delighted, sometimes displeased, but the recurring, echoing, familiar ‘Lily. Lily. LILY.”

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Before the separation, towards the end of my older daughter’s fifth grade, about five minutes before she was supposed to start school one morning, she followed a chaotic impulse and cut off the bangs in front of her forehead and temples. The result was as bad as you can imagine. Getting her to class that day seemed like a miracle on par with the loaves and fishes.

After school we had an urgent meeting at a shop next door that specialized in children’s haircuts. The stylist and I came up with some kind of answer, we convinced Lily to try a version of actress Audrey Tatou’s hairstyle from the 2001 indie hit in a bowl shape, minus the bangs, Amelia. Lily, seeing the results, threw a world-class tantrum, wanting to leave school, threatening to never go outside again, whatever you want.

That crisis subsided, but after separating from my second wife, the fact remained that, even under the best of circumstances, much of Lily’s life was in flux—a new neighborhood, a new school starting soon, a dramatically altered family structure. Is it possible that this child without a mother is not threatened by her little sister who had her? Was it possible for my younger child to do anything but crave the approval, even adoration, of her charismatic older sister?

Charles, Ione and Lily in the subway.

Courtesy of Charles Bock

Our path was to follow plans that worked until they stopped working. Then I either pushed through the anomaly, or made adjustments, or gave up and tried something else, or just kept going. I used to push the little one on the swings all the time, I spent so much time pushing her on the swings at the local playground that I taught myself to sing the alphabet backwards to her, just to have something to do.

In the meantime, in the midst of all these broken plans and dead time, sometimes, some shine, a glimmer.

Lily is now a teenager and I am a big six-year-old girl. My last stroke of genius was to get the girls a little blond Shi Tzu puppy. They called him Buster. Of course, it turns out that Buster was abused and he bonds deeply with me, but he barks and runs away whenever Lily comes home and hides whenever Ione tries to pet him.

It seemed to me that any plan, strategy, preconceived notion, cheat code or whatever was doomed to fail, often miserably. But. But. But. Trying is everything. It’s the only real chance we have. Through the presence, engagement and acceptance that is characteristic of love, family there is appeared.

At the end of some nights, when it’s late and the lights are off and they should be sleeping, as I walk the dog and pass their closed bedroom door, I hear, however faintly, the best music in the world: two sisters whispering, laughing are.

I’ll Do It Better: A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love by Charles Bock is now available wherever books are sold.

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Source: HIS Education