Us · The First Year · French Braids · Dads' Night · Money and Child Care · To the New Guys · The 14 Suppers
Pull up a chair. Watch out for the sticky spot on the left, that's from Thursday.
Everything at our house happens at this table. Homework, permission slips, the bills, the phone, Candy Land, crying, laughing, and every night at six o'clock, supper. I'm Bernard Racine, I'm 33, I'm a machinist in Manchester, and since the spring of 1997 I've been raising my two girls on my own. I didn't know a thing when I started. I know a little more now. This page is what I've picked up, for any other dad who just got handed the whole job.
Marissa is 9 and in fourth grade. She reads everything, including the cereal box and my pay stub. She is going to be a veterinarian, or a librarian, or both at once. She is the boss of the house and we all know it.
Katie is 6 and just started first grade. She's lost two teeth, she talks from the minute her eyes open until the minute they close, and she can't carry a tune in a bucket but she sings anyway, loud. I wouldn't change one thing about her.
Their mom moved out of state in the spring of '97. She wasn't ready for this life, and she knew it, and I'll always give her credit for being honest about that. The girls talk to her on the phone on Sundays and spend three weeks with her every summer. That's all I'm going to say about it here. She's their mom, and they might read this someday.
And me. I run a CNC lathe on the day shift. I grew up on the West Side, where my mémère still lives, and my family has been Franco in Manchester since my great-grandfather came down from Québec to work in the mills. I can fix almost anything with a motor in it. Two years ago I could not have told you what a scrunchie was.
| The First Year: What Nobody Told Me |
The forms. September is paperwork month. Emergency cards, lunch forms, picture day, the bus form, the field trip slips, the "please send in a box of tissues" note, times two kids. I kept losing them, so now every paper goes in one folder on the fridge, and I sign everything at this table the same night. The folder has saved my life more than once.
The lice letter. The first time a note came home from school saying there were lice in Marissa's class, I called my mother in a panic at nine o'clock at night. Here's what I learned: it happens to everybody, it's got nothing to do with how clean your house is, the school nurse knows exactly what to do, and you will spend a whole Saturday with a fine-tooth comb and the washing machine. You'll live. So will they.
Girl Scout cookies. Marissa was a Brownie that first winter, and I learned that the cookie sale is serious business. I took the order form to the shop and the guys bought forty boxes. I'm told I'm a legend at the troop. My foreman still asks every January if it's time.
The doctor. I didn't know where their shot records were. Turned out they were in a shoebox in the hall closet. Now there's a folder for that too. Find out the name of your kids' doctor, keep the shot records where you can find them, and write down every question before you go, because you'll forget them all the second the nurse comes in.
Morning hair. This is the big one. The first month, I'd send Marissa to the bus stop with a ponytail that looked like I'd done it with a socket wrench. One morning she cried at the bus stop. I went to work and felt like the worst father in New Hampshire. That was the day I decided I was going to learn to do hair right. See the next part.
The quiet. I'm not going to pretend. After the girls are asleep, the house gets awful quiet. The first year I'd sit at this table at ten o'clock at night with a cold cup of coffee and wonder how I was going to do it. Some nights I still do. It helps to have somebody to call. It helps to have the dads' night (below). And it helps, every night at bedtime, to get the guitar out and play the girls a couple of songs. Katie always wants "You Are My Sunshine." Marissa likes the old French songs my pépère used to sing. I'm not much of a guitar player, but they don't know that yet.
Burnt toast. I have burned toast in every way there is to burn toast. The girls eat it anyway and tell me it's "crunchy." That's love.
| How a Machinist Learned French Braids |
Mrs. Goddard next door did hair for thirty years before she retired. The day after the bus stop disaster, I knocked on her door and asked if she'd teach me. She laughed for about a minute and then said, "Bring her over Saturday."
Three Saturdays in a row, Marissa sat on a stool in Mrs. Goddard's kitchen, and Mrs. Goddard stood behind me and talked me through it. Three pieces. Cross the side over the middle. Add a little hair from the side each time. Keep it tight. Don't let go. I also got a book on braiding out of the library with pictures of every step, and I practiced at night on the fringe of an old bedspread.
Here's what I'll tell you: it's a lot like any other job with your hands. You learn it slow, and you do it wrong, and then one day your hands know it. These days I can do a French braid in about four minutes, two in about seven, and Katie's favorite, two braids with ribbons on the ends, in about ten if she holds still, which she doesn't.
Tips from a dad: brush it all out first, every tangle. A spray bottle of water makes it behave. Hair elastics will vanish from your house like socks from the dryer, so buy the big bag. And do it at the table after breakfast, not in the bathroom at 7:25 with the bus coming.
| Single Dads' Night at the Y |
In February of '98 I put a card up on the bulletin board at the Y: "Single dads, coffee, first Thursday, 7 p.m. Bring your kids." Three guys showed up the first night. Now there's usually eight or ten. The Y gives us the back room for free, and a couple of the teenage counselors watch the kids in the gym for a dollar a kid.
We drink bad coffee and eat donuts and talk. Steve has three boys and knows everything about Little League. Don's the youngest of us, with a little guy in diapers, and we all remember being that tired. Rob is the one who figured out the after-school program sliding scale and walked the rest of us through it. Lance has a daughter who's eleven, and when he said he didn't know how to talk to her about growing up, the rest of us admitted we didn't either, and one month he got the school nurse to come talk to us. Bravest thing anybody's done at the Y, and that includes the polar bear swim.
If there isn't a dads' group where you live, start one. Put up a card. Somebody will come. Somebody always needs to.
I'm not a tax man, so this is general. Ask whoever does your taxes, or call the IRS, about your own situation.
- Head of household. If you're single and the kids live with you, you probably file as head of household, not single. It makes a difference.
- The child care credit. If you pay for day care or an after-school program so you can work, there's a credit on your federal taxes that gives you back part of what you paid. Keep every receipt. Get the provider's tax ID number.
- Ask at work. Some companies have a plan where you can set aside money for child care before taxes. Ours does. I didn't know for a year.
- After-school programs. The girls go to the before-school program at the Y at quarter to seven, and take the bus from there. After school they go to the program at their school until I pick them up around four. Ask about a sliding scale. A lot of programs have one and don't advertise it.
- Swap with other parents. Snow days are a single parent's nightmare. Three of us from dads' night and two moms from the girls' school trade off. I take everybody's kids one snow day, somebody else takes them the next. Tamika in Kansas City runs a babysitting swap with her neighbors, paid in popsicle sticks instead of money, and wrote it up as the Mom Swap on her page Two Hands Full. We stole the sticks and call ours the Dad Swap. Her page is for single moms, but read it anyway, guys. She knows her stuff.
If you just got custody, and you're standing in your kitchen right now wondering what you got yourself into, here's what I'd tell you over coffee:
- You can do this. You're not babysitting. You're their dad. That's the whole job now, and you're the guy for it.
- Ask for help. Ask the neighbor lady. Ask your mother. Ask the moms at the bus stop how they do it. Nobody's going to think less of you. Most of them will be tickled.
- Get a calendar for the fridge and write everything on it. Everything.
- Eat supper together at the table, every night you can, with the TV off. It doesn't have to be fancy. Here's what we eat.
- Learn to do hair. I mean it.
- Never run down their mother in front of them. Not once. Not even when you want to.
- It's all right to be lonely. Find somebody to talk to. Take care of yourself, too. They need you in one piece.
- Some nights it'll be cereal for supper. That's fine. Tomorrow's another night.
For the dads who have their kids every other weekend instead of every day, Ray in Iowa has a good page called Every Other Weekend, with a long list of cheap things to do with your kids. I've used about half of them on Saturdays.
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