“Ma’s going to lecture me about moving back home.”
“Probably. But she’ll watch Emma. Bring her.”
I close my eyes, relief and dread mixing together in equal measure. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re on dish duty this weekend.”
She hangs up, and I stand there, staring at the calendar on the fridge that has Emma’s routine carefully color-coded—blue for preschool days, green for nanny days, red for days I’m supposed to be home. Except the nanny days are a lie now because we don’t have a nanny.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.
Here’s what I know about stress from a neurological perspective: when your hypothalamus perceives a threat, it signals your pituitary gland, which triggers your adrenal glands to flood your system with cortisol and adrenaline. Heart rate increases. Blood pressure spikes. Muscles tense. Your body prepares for fight or flight.
Right now my body is voting for flight, which is inconvenient because I have a four-year-old, a tenure-track position and a lecture in two hours.
This is the sixth childcare crisis I’ve had to deal with. The first nanny quit after Emma cut her hair with kitchen scissors while she was on the phone—not just a slight trim, but chunks of it. The second nanny made it a month before Emma bit her hard enough to break skin. And then there was steady procession of them leading up to Tracy, nanny number six, who lasted two weeks before a plastic plate to the head was apparently her limit.
Every time this happens, I have to dismantle my entire work schedule like a Jenga tower. Cancel office hours. Reschedule meetings. Beg colleagues to cover my classes. And every single time, I call Maria or my mother, adding another favor to the running tally I keep in my head, adding another layer to the guilt that’s become as familiar as my own heartbeat.
I love being Emma’s father. She’s objectively the most important thing in my life, and I can say that without any of the hyperbole people usually employ when talking about their children. But I’m also exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with lack of sleep and everything to do with the fact that I’m trying to do two full-time jobs with the energy and hours for maybe one and a half.
I teach four classes a semester. I’m running a study on memory consolidation during REM sleep that requires me in the lab after hours monitoring equipment and subjects. I have a paper due to theJournal of Cognitive Neurosciencein eight weeks that I haven’t started writing because I haven’t had time to analyze all the data. I serve on two departmental committees because professors don’t have the luxury of declining extra service work.
And I’m a single parent to a child who’s been systematically destroying every childcare arrangement I can find.
The math doesn’t work. I’ve tried to make it work—detailed schedules, contingency plans, systems—but the fundamental equation is flawed. There aren’t enough hours in the day. There isn’t enough of me.
I’m failing spectacularly at both jobs. I can feel it. My students deserve someone who isn’t constantly distracted. Emma deserves a father who isn’t always stressed and tired and barely holding it together.
And the worst part is that I can’t fix this. I can explain the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity down to the molecular level. I can map the neural correlates of memory formation. But I can’t fix my daughter’s grief. I can’t make her less angry or less hurt or less desperate for the mother who left without looking back. I can’t undo the damage that’s already been done.
Emma is a strong-willed child. She always has been. Even as a baby, she knew what she wanted and would scream untilshe got it. She is the child who will go limp in the grocery store and force you to carry her out if she isn’t ready to go home yet. Rebecca used to joke that Emma inherited my stubbornness.
But this is different. The tantrums now are volcanic. Violent, sometimes. She threw a toy truck through the kitchen window last month. She’s told me she hates me more times than I can count. She hardly eats. She wakes up crying for her mother and nothing I say helps.
I’ve read every parenting book I can find at the local library. I’ve talked to her pediatrician twice. I’ve tried time-outs and sticker charts and gentle re-directing and firm boundaries and nothing is working. Nothing sticks because none of it addresses the root of the actual problem, which is that her mother left and Emma doesn’t understand why.
And I’m drowning.
“Emma!” I call toward her room. “Get your rain boots! We’re taking the subway.”
There’s a squeal from her room, followed by the thunder of small feet on hardwood. She appears in the kitchen doorway, her face lit up in a way I haven’t seen all morning. “Are we going to see Yiayia and Papou?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Yes! Score!” She pumps her fist in the air—something she picked up from watchingThe Mighty Duckswith Maria last week—and spins in a circle. “Can I help make the spanakopita?”
“If Yiayia says yes.”
She runs back to get her boots and I grab her yellow rain jacket from the hook. It’s supposed to rain all day, which means the subway station is going to be packed, but walking fifteen blocks with a four-year-oldin the rainis an even worse option.
Emma comes back wearing her boots—red with white polka dots—and I crouch down to help her into the jacket, zipping it up while she stands impatiently, already mentally at the restaurant.
I grab her backpack from the bench by the door—the one with a purple unicorn on it that’s missing one eye because Emma performed a “surgery” on it with scissors last month. Inside is her coloring book, a box of crayons, her Etch-A-Sketch, a viewfinder with theLittle Mermaidreels, a few Barbies and a well-loved copy ofThe Very Hungry Caterpillarthat she insists on bringing everywhere even though she has the entire book memorized.
I check my watch. 10:07. If the Fates and the MTA align, I can get her to the restaurant by 10:45, sprint to the 79th Street station, and be at Columbia by 11:45. Assuming the trains are running on time and assuming Emma doesn’t have a meltdown on the platform, which is a fifty-fifty shot on a good day.
“Ready, Captain?” I ask, opening the umbrella.
