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1.
“Eliza,” Paula says softly, pulling up a second plastic chair and sitting down beside Nathaniel, gazing at the sleeping newborn cradled in his arms. “It suits her. My Fair Lady?” she guesses, leaning in to trace a fingertip down the side of Eliza’s tiny face from temple to perfect chin.
Nathaniel’s eyes flit up to her in surprise. Paula’s lack of knowledge about all things musical theatre is a source of frequent exasperation for Rebecca, who, for all her evolution, still can’t seem to keep straight which pop culture references to use with whom.
“Hamilton, I think,” he replies, keeping his voice low to avoid disturbing the sleeping baby or her sleeping mother. “But I don’t know for sure. The list she gave me to narrow down included Elphaba, so when I found actual names on there, I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
Caught by surprise, Paula’s not quite quick enough to stifle her laugh, and they both look automatically in Rebecca’s direction. She’s still snoring a little, head and shoulders propped up on a small mountain of pillows, beautiful and peaceful and perfectly relaxed. No combination of antenatal classes, nauseatingly graphic warnings from Paula and very practical pointers from Heather could’ve prepared him for the reality of the past eighteen hours. It went fine, all things considered, but she definitely deserves all the comfortable, undisturbed sleep she can get.
Nathaniel drags his eyes away from her to look back down at the baby in his arms. Their daughter. It’s a confusing mix of sensations: the devastating force of protectiveness expanding so fast in his chest he’s not sure how he’s supposed to contain it, combined with the slightly awkward gentleness that took over his every movement the moment she was placed in his arms. He holds her carefully, his body very still even as every cell hums with the pent up energy of a brand new emotion he doesn’t know what to do with.
“Hey. You are gonna be great,” Paula says, fiercely warm and reassuring.
He feels a brief, distant twinge of embarrassment at how wrecked he must look to elicit her mama bear voice, usually reserved for Rebecca. But it’s all too much, and Paula has, regrettably, seen him in much worse conditions than this, so he just mumbles thanks as she wraps an arm around his shoulders and squeezes.
Paula’s gone home to get some sleep by the time Rebecca wakes, her eyes fluttering slowly open to find Eliza still cradled in his arms. “Hi,” she whispers, a slow smile spreading across her face as she looks up at him.
“Hi.” He scoots his chair closer and she traces the scruff of his jaw with her knuckles, smooths her thumb over his cheekbone. He catches her palm with a kiss before it drops. “How do you feel?”
She hums sleepily, thinking about it. “A bit like I got hit by a truck?” she says, wincing as she pushes herself to a sitting position. “But the truck was full of oxytocin.”
“Mm, evocative,” he replies, smiling a little. “You should write that down, that’s a lyric.”
“Or an album title.”
She reaches her arms out. He stands to pass the baby over, and Rebecca shuffles over on the bed a little as she takes her, making room for him to perch on the edge. He rests a hand on her thigh and watches as she settles Eliza against her chest, cradling her there with one hand and sliding the other into his own. She plants a soft kiss on the (alarmingly not yet solid) crown of their daughter’s head, lingering there for a moment with her eyes closed, breathing her in. He watches her hand where it rests on Eliza’s back, making tiny, absentminded arcs back and forth with her thumb the way she used to on the swell of her belly. Her eyes are brimming with tears when she opens them.
“Hey, um – I have a quick question for you,” she says, suddenly imbuing her tone with an airiness so casual it’s a little unnerving, given the tears pooling in her eyes. His eyebrows climb his forehead, disbelieving. “Just checking in,” she insists. “No biggie. . .”
When she’s been expectantly staring at him for a few seconds without saying another word, he prompts, “Okay?”
She pulls her lip between her teeth, studying his face with trepidation for a moment before responding. “Are you terrified?”
A surprised laugh escapes him before he can catch it, and she smiles back, a little self-conscious as a single tear rolls down each cheek. He wipes them away, then rubs circles on the inside of her wrist with his thumb as he considers his answer, stuck between wanting to reassure her that there’s nothing to be afraid of and wanting to reassure her that it’s okay to be afraid anyway. Eventually, he lands on the truth: “Yes. But I’m other things too.”
She releases a slow breath, weaving their fingers together. “Yeah,” she whispers, and kisses the top of Eliza’s head again, feather light. “Other things too.” She looks up at him, wide eyed and vulnerable, and he can’t suppress the dizzying feeling that his entire universe is sitting in front of him on this bed. “We’re a team, right?”
“We’re a team,” he agrees, squeezing her hand between both of his. “I’m not going anywhere, Rebecca.”
2.
On Eliza’s first birthday, Rebecca wakes slowly, feeling unusually well rested. She rolls over and squints suspiciously in the direction of the baby monitor on her nightstand – waking slowly is an uncommon luxury, this past year. There’s a note in front of it in Nathaniel’s neat cursive: Good morning! We love you. Go back to sleep. – N & E. Smiling, she moves it aside to see the screen. Eliza is standing up in her crib, wide awake and babbling animatedly to Nathaniel, who’s picking out clothes from her closet with his back turned to the camera.
It took Rebecca a while to get the balance of her brain chemicals in order after Eliza was born, and to integrate mommy into her painstakingly built and meticulously maintained sense of identity. Motherhood brought to the surface all kinds of insecurities she thought she had dealt with, and the sheer force of emotion she feels for her daughter is overwhelming – Eliza sets her brain alight in a way she’s never really learned to navigate healthily before. She's heard the phrase it takes a village probably a thousand times in the past year, and her friends are more supportive than she could’ve hoped for. Her intense therapy schedule could buy Doctor Akopian a pretty fancy yacht, if she was so inclined. And possibly a private chef to follow her around cooking lobster.
Rebecca works hard, because she is nothing if not determined, and things have started to get easier. She takes her meds and does her homework and plays piano every day. She writes songs and plays them at open mic, and Eliza loves when she sings to her. Nathaniel reminds her over and over that Eliza doesn’t need normal – she needs parents who love her and express that love in ways that are not totally dysfunctional.
On the monitor, Eliza stretches grabby hands toward Nathaniel, and when he turns to her he does it right back, making her giggle before he picks her up and hugs her. Rebecca watches them for a minute, because she can’t quite get enough of them, smiling so wide her face hurts. Then she grabs Ruth Gator Ginsburg from the floor and goes back to sleep, because she can’t get enough of that either.
The next time she wakes, it’s to a whispered good morning sunshine and Nathaniel’s gentle hand squeezing her shoulder. She rolls onto her back, humming contentedly. He has Eliza balanced on his hip, fresh faced and dressed for the day. “Happy birthday, honey,” Rebecca murmurs, sitting up against the headboard and crossing her legs in front of her.
Nathaniel sits down on the bed and deposits Eliza beside him. She happily starts babbling mamamama, crawling into Rebecca’s lap and squeezing her cheeks between chubby hands. She’s warm and soft and her breath smells like banana. Rebecca wrinkles her nose and sticks her tongue out at her. She copies, and Rebecca wraps her arms around her and holds her close, nuzzling the ticklish spot where her neck joins her shoulder until she wriggles free and starts trying to scale her torso like a climbing wall.
“Hey, let’s stop manhandling mommy when she just woke up,” Nathaniel suggests, lifting her off and depositing her on her back on the mattress, where she starts babbling nonsense and kicking her legs in the air. Rebecca smiles, watching the brand new levels of softness Nathaniel’s face achieves when he’s looking at their daughter. When he catches her looking, his cheeks flush a little and he reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Eliza busies herself using Ruth Gator Ginsburg as a bouncy castle. “I would’ve left you sleeping while we go pick up party stuff,” he says quietly, “but I thought you’d want to see her before we head out. Sorry if I guessed wrong.”
“You guessed right,” she assures him, catching his hand and kissing his palm before releasing it so he can capture the pen Eliza has somehow ended up with. His reflexes are more suited to keeping up with her mischief than Rebecca’s. He puts it down to water polo; she puts it down to monkeys. “I can’t believe it’s been a year,” she muses.
“Mm,” he agrees. “It feels like she just got here.” He catches Eliza as she crawls toward the edge of the bed, pulling her into his lap and kissing the top of her head. She wraps one tiny hand around his pinky and one around his index finger and pulls. Rebecca pulls her knees up to her chin and hides her grin behind them as he looks down at his hand then back up at her. “I also feel like I’ve aged ten years.”
“Aw, you don’t look like you’ve aged a day over eight.”
“I’m sorry, did you want me to bring you back breakfast or. . .?” he says, eyebrows raised.
Rebecca sits up straight and presses her hand dramatically to her chest. “Well, sir, have you been drinkin’ from that there fountain of youth? Glory be, your face just gets younger by the –”
“Mm, because you know how irresistible your weird old timey voices are,” he interrupts wryly. But he leans in to kiss her, pinning Eliza against his chest with one hand and winding the other into Rebecca’s hair, kissing her soundly. “I love you,” he whispers against her lips as he pulls back, sending tingles all the way to her toes.
“Love you too,” she replies softly, trailing a hand down his arm. “And you,” she adds, turning her attention to Eliza, holding her arms out for a hug before they leave. Nathaniel passes her over, and she snuggles happily into Rebecca’s arms, little hands holding fistfuls of her t-shirt. “I love you so much.”
3.
At two years old, Eliza is all chubby cheeks, quick babbling and unstable gait. Her hair is a mop of soft, dark curls, more or less impossible to tame, and she reminds him more of Rebecca every day, which he expected. She’s a whirlwind. She feels everything with her entire being – her body vibrates with effervescent joy one minute and crumples into a ball of overwhelming sadness the next. The first thing she does when she wakes in the morning is sing to herself.
What he didn’t expect was that she reminds him of himself, too. Her focus is short lived but absolute. When she’s really concentrating on a toy or puzzle, she goes quiet and still in a way that’s much more him than Rebecca, and she frowns the exact same way he does. Her favourite books have pictures of animals in them. Where Rebecca tends to leave a trail of chaos behind her when she’s absorbed in something, Eliza likes things neat and stacked and ordered.
It’s impossible now to forget the fact that they’re influencing the development of a real human, someone they will one day watch walk out into the world and do things they will never find out about. For now, though, the fierce independent streak she’s developing is balanced with an endearing need to be close to them. This is the part of parenting Nathaniel worried he’d be bad at, but cuddling his daughter as much as she wants turns out to be the most perfectly natural thing in the world. Honestly, it makes his own parents more impossible to understand than ever.
He still has trouble with some things. She’s learning to name her emotions, and he’s still a work in progress on that front. The first time she touched his cheek and asked, “Sad?”, he clammed up so completely Rebecca had to rescue him. Sometimes daddy has a hard time talking when he’s sad, she said, and he felt something splinter in his chest. But he is learning.
Rebecca has channelled her own baggage into insisting Eliza has a party for every birthday at least until she can express an informed opinion on the matter, so he spends most of the morning of her second birthday prepping party food. When he’s finally done, he slides the last fruit platter into the refrigerator, cleans the surfaces, and joins Rebecca and Eliza in the living room. He spots the flashing notification light on Rebecca’s phone and picks it up from the coffee table.
“You have a text from Heather,” he tells her.
She looks up from where she’s sitting straddled on the floor with Eliza in front of her, working on a giant crayon drawing together. “Read it to me?”
“You sure?”
She raises her eyebrows, amused. “How inappropriate can it be?”
He shrugs and opens the text. “She says your girl troupe is assembling,” he says. “And do you need them to bring anything apart from the –”
Her eyes go wide and she cups her hands over Eliza’s ears. “Shhh!”
Eliza wriggles in protest, twisting her head. “Mommy, no!” she admonishes, outraged.
He rolls his eyes, but can’t summon any feeling other than overwhelming fondness for the pair of them. “The C-A-K-E,” he spells. “Also, you’re ridiculous.”
She grins, releasing Eliza’s head from between her hands and ruffling her hair as an apology. “You love me.”
“Of course I do,” he agrees. “Well? Do you need anything from Heather other than, um – that?”
“No, we’re good,” Rebecca says cheerfully. “You can text her back for me. Make sure you use plenty of birthday-appropriate emojis.”
He shakes his head. “I’m just gonna do it from my phone. Going undercover in your girl flock seems like inviting trouble.”
“Gurl group,” she corrects automatically, and Eliza echoes it: gurl goop. “You tell him, sister,” Rebecca says, pleased. “Anyway, it’s fine, you won’t see anything there I wouldn’t tell you. We don’t talk about you much. We’re on a roll at passing the Bechdel test recently.”
“I don’t think it counts as passing the Bechdel test if one of the women is me,” he points out.
“Solid point,” she replies thoughtfully. Her expression turns stern. “Don’t you dare ruin my streak – use your own phone, interloper!”
He rolls his eyes, swallows his objection – that’s what I was trying to do! – and texts Heather back. He shifts onto the floor, fitting himself in behind Rebecca and wrapping his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. She hums with satisfaction and leans back into him.
“I like your drawing,” he says quietly. Eliza has recently learned to draw a wobbly circle, and the paper is full of them. Rebecca has been hard at work transforming them, at Eliza’s request, into flowers and balloons and turtles, which Eliza is now cheerfully scribbling all over. Rebecca leans back against his chest, and he adds, “You’re very good at this mom thing. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you,” she replies, low and soft and just for him, tracing her fingertips up and down his forearm. “Couldn’t do it without you.”
He can’t imagine doing it without her either. But he’s at the very edge of what he can express without turning into a puddle, so he just combs her hair back from her face with his fingers and presses a soft kiss to her temple, and she pulls his arms tight around her like she knows what he means.
4.
They spend Eliza’s third birthday at the beach, saving her party for the weekend. Her unruly curls are long enough for a tiny ponytail on the top of her head, her eyes early morning blue and endlessly expressive. She’s strong-willed and stubborn, but it’s getting easier to navigate as she gets older and they get more experienced. Today, she was coaxed into her sun-safe zip-up swimsuit with the always enticing promise that she could wear anything she wanted over it. As a result, she comes twirling out of her bedroom in what is essentially a brightly coloured wetsuit, with a princess dress from her dressing up box over the top, backwards and bunched up in odd places.
Nathaniel’s eyebrows raise, his mouth opening automatically in protest, and Rebecca cuts in enthusiastically, “What a beautiful dress! And not only beautiful – because society’s beauty standards and fleeting fashion trends are no way to measure our worth, am I right Eliza? – but a bold choice. Creative. Out of the box. I love what this outfit says about you, kiddo – put it here.”
She reaches down to offer her hand for a high five, and Eliza whacks it with the force of someone three times her size, then tugs on the hem of Rebecca’s floral sundress. “Pretty,” she says, her voice adorably unfinished, most of the consonants still not quite right. She babbles a jumble of syllables that come very close to I love what this says about you.
She hurls herself at Nathaniel, and he crouches to pick her up. “This is an unconventional choice,” he says, tugging her dress a little straighter as he stands. The toddler years are turning out to be a crash course in choosing your battles, and he’s faring better than Rebecca could’ve expected. She suspects their daughter’s expert employment of the wide-eyed pout has something to do with it. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says, “but unconventional people are my favourite.”
“Why?” Eliza says, pulling back to tilt her head at him.
It’s her favourite question – she asks it at least a hundred times a day. Rebecca smiles, grabbing her purse and the car keys and raising her eyebrows, awaiting his answer. He dips his head, not quite covering a slightly embarrassed smile. He whispers something in Eliza’s ear, and she turns to look at Rebecca then giggles against his shoulder, apparently satisfied with his response.
“That’s not fair!” Rebecca protests, tamping down a genuine pang of injustice. “You guys can’t already have secrets from me!”
“Sure we can,” Nathaniel says easily, leading the way to the front door, shifting Eliza onto his hip to open it. “Got everything?”
It’s Eliza’s first time on the beach since she became properly mobile, and it isn’t going too far to say she is enthralled. She shoves her hands into the sand, pulling up fistfuls and letting it fall through her fingers to blow away on the breeze. They stand together at the edge of the water, holding hands in a row with fizzling waves lapping at their feet, and she squeals and stomps and splashes. Nathaniel doesn’t complain once about the direct sunlight, although he does top up Eliza's sunscreen more times than is strictly necessary. She finds a piece of smooth blue sea glass and drops to her butt on the sand to examine it, holding it up to her eyes and up to the light. She dips it in the water and buries it in the sand, before tucking it safely in the pocket of Rebecca’s dress for safekeeping, because it’s very special. She asks endless questions and tries out words she’s learned from toys and books and nature documentaries, like crab and seashell and ocean.
When Rebecca crouches down to take a selfie with her to send to the girls, she plants a kiss on her cheek and says I love you mommy. It isn’t the first time Rebecca has heard it, but it’s the first time she’s offered it unprompted. Forgetting the selfie, Rebecca wraps her arms around her and hugs her hard.
Later, they walk back toward the car with Eliza a couple of steps ahead, overtired and off balance and flatly refusing to be carried. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, but she can’t be swayed. They’re adapting to the need to let the disasters happen sometimes, the overbearing alternative being ground Rebecca and Nathaniel are both keen to avoid. Rebecca knows it’s coming the split second before it happens: Eliza drags her feet a little, trips over nothing, and falls flat on the ground. She draws in a colossal breath, then channels all the energy in her little body into full voice wailing.
Nathaniel winces at the sound, throwing an automatic glance around to see if anyone else is looking. “That was predictable,” he mutters. Rebecca hums her agreement, and he scoops Eliza into his arms. “Hey,” he soothes, holding her against his chest and smoothing her hair down. “Hey, you’re okay.”
Rebecca doesn’t think she’ll ever get over how gentle and reassuring he is with her. Even when she’s at her most frustrating – and she really does have her moments – he is warm and patient and present in a way that feels intentional. And she thinks it is, just like she’s intentional about every way she is determined not to be like Naomi.
The screaming downgrades pretty quickly to snuffling sobs once she’s safely in Nathaniel’s arms.
“Anything hurt?” Rebecca checks, resting a hand on Nathaniel’s bicep and one on their daughter’s back.
Eliza shakes her head, burrowing into Nathaniel’s shoulder, a tendency that’s one of the many things she has in common with her mother.
Rebecca presses a quick kiss to her cheek as she goes silent and sleepy, then slides her hand up to the back of Nathaniel’s neck, pushing up on her tiptoes and guiding him down for a kiss. “You’re very good at this,” she says, dropping back down to flat feet and looking at how tiny Eliza looks wrapped in his ridiculously long arms. Her cheek is adorably squished against his pectoral, her eyes closed and eyelashes damp.
He looks down, cheeks turning pink, an embarrassed half smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You’re pretty great yourself.”
She hooks her thumb into his belt loop as they resume walking.
“Rebecca?”
She looks up at him. “Mm?”
“How much snot is on my shirt right now?”
She looks him over, smiling. “More than zero,” she says. “Less than a lot.”
“Fantastic.”
5.
It crept up on him slowly, the ability to have an actual conversation with his child. She asks him questions and, as long as they’re about a sentence long, listens to his answers and seems to retain most of them. She tells long, meandering stories and offers useful advice, like feel happy daddy, and sometimes you just gotta take a nap. Sometimes he eavesdrops on her talking to her toys and hears himself and Rebecca reflected back, and sometimes he hears things that couldn’t have come from either of them. Talking to Eliza is one of his favourite things, even if it reminds him a bit of a surrealist painting – all the features of a conversation, but rearranged and stretched out and a little off-kilter.
She has started swimming lessons and played Goldilocks in a hilariously chaotic preschool musical. Rebecca insisted that helping her learn her lines was Nathaniel’s job because she was at risk of becoming a terrifying stage parent. His attempt at protest was half-hearted and short lived. Rebecca did learn all the songs on piano, though, and watching the two of them singing them together is pretty much Nathaniel’s favourite thing in the world.
The night of her fourth birthday, Eliza cuddles her new stuffed monkey as Nathaniel pulls her blankets up to her chin. Rebecca switches the overhead light for the night light then climbs onto her bed behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist and kissing the top of her head.
“What was your best part of today, mommy?” Eliza mumbles, her eyelids already starting to droop. This question is a routine, and she is a stickler.
Rebecca’s quiet at first, chewing her lip, her eyes shining in the soft glow of the night light. Nathaniel sits down on the edge of the bed and rests a hand on her ankle, squeezing gently. She’s taking slow, even breaths. He raises his eyebrows a fraction: you okay? She smiles back, soft and reassuring.
“You want to know my real favourite?” she asks quietly, stroking Eliza’s hair back from her face.
“Uh huh.”
“Okay. My favourite part was when you did the pretzel trick all by yourself. Because it reminded me that even when everything feels really big and upsetting, you’re gonna try to feel calm. And that’s so important, and I’m so proud of you.”
A pinprick of light expands in his chest, warm and bright and full. The pretzel trick is a self-soothing thing they’ve been working on, at Doctor Akopian’s suggestion. Eliza is more social than he ever was as a kid, but she’s prone to overload. The pretzel trick means tangling herself up in a little ball and squeezing hard – if they catch her before she hits meltdown, it usually calms her pretty quickly. Today, they had Paula and Darryl’s families over for dinner, and when things started to get a little loud and busy and confusing, they found her behind the sofa, twisted into a pretzel and breathing slowly. She’d unfurled herself and explained without being asked: I needed a break. Rebecca practically dissolved at his side. He’s spent enough nights up late talking through her fears about Eliza’s mental health that he was right there with her in that moment.
He swallows hard and looks down at his knees, stroking Rebecca’s ankle with his thumb.
Half asleep and oblivious to the emotional obliteration of both her parents, Eliza says, “My best part was when I got Monkey. Daddy?”
“This part, right now,” he says, and can’t elaborate. She squashes Monkey against her face, grinning, and he leans down and drops a quick kiss on her forehead. She winds an arm around his neck and hugs him tight. “I love you,” he whispers, extracting himself from her grip and standing up. “Goodnight, sweetie.”
Later, he joins Rebecca on the sofa, passing her a glass of wine. She sighs appreciatively, curling against him with her head on his chest, and clinks her glass against his own before taking a sip. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, kisses the top of her head and holds her close, nose in her hair.
“I know it’s crazy –” Rebecca begins.
“Do we use that term in this house?” Nathaniel teases.
She nudges his ribs with her elbow. “I know it’s unreasonable,” she corrects, “but just seeing her doing that today made me feel. . . better. I know it doesn’t mean she won’t have problems or whatever. I know we can’t protect her from everything. I’m just always so afraid she’ll be like me. . .”
“There are worse people to be like, Rebecca,” he says softly. He’s lost count of how many times he’s said it, but he thinks it bears repeating.
She takes a slow breath and burrows her head into his chest. He tightens his arm around her shoulders.
“I know we have a long way to go and we don’t know what her future is gonna be,” she says, “but today I felt like maybe we’re doing something right. Setting her up better than our parents did, at least.”
That’s a low bar to jump, but that is clearly not the right thing to say, so he swallows it with a sip of wine. “We are,” he says with conviction. “She’s already better than I am at saying how she feels.”
“And as of today, better than I am at regulating her emotions,” Rebecca says, with a smile in her voice.
Neither is quite true, of course, but that’s okay. He nudges Rebecca’s forehead with his nose, and she looks up at him, her eyes sparkling. She takes a long sip of wine, then puts both their glasses down on the coffee table before climbing into his lap. Her hands rest at the back of his neck, thumbs brushing the sensitive skin under his ears, sending a pleasant shiver down his spine. He holds her by the hips and pulls her forward, sliding his hands up the back of her sweater. She makes a pleased, surprised sound and smiles against his mouth as they kiss.