mr. mom (by billy hunt, baby daddy)
Will at Work
Photo by Billy
Sure Jocelyn, take the job, I can watch the baby while I am at work. My assistant can help me, and Will is so good that I know it won’t be too much of a disruption.
I am an idiot. Two days after Jocelyn started teaching and I became the daytime caregiver for our son, someone replaced my sweet angel with a screaming, biting, scratching, pinching, demon spawn; a bad seed without boundaries or limits whose only mission is to drive me bats**t insane.
The worst part is he’s still just good enough that I let my guard down sometimes. He acts nice, goes in for a kiss, then slashes at my face like Wolverine going for the last hamburger, never changing the sweet expression on his face.
He doesn’t mean it, my friends tell me, He just doesn’t know any better. They don’t know my son like I do. My friends make the all-to-common mistake that good looking = good. They can’t see what is lurking in those big, expressive eyes: rage, willfulness, and a demand to be the boss of the applesauce.
Over these past three weeks, it has been getting better. Slowly, if not surely, we are working it out. No Will, don’t put raisins in the printer. . . No Will, don’t push the reboot button while daddy is editing a bridal portrait. . . Thank you for not screaming while daddy is meeting with a potential client. Somehow, I know this arrangement is going to work. Will and I can do this. We can have the photo business, have some fun, and take care of each other. Especially now that we hired a baby sitter every Friday during business hours.
TGIF
Check out this blog by a local writer, Wistar Watt, who never fails to make me laugh.
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Filed under family matters, photographs | Comments (3)first day
William and Billy in the studio
Photos by Billy
Today is the first day of school. Driving to breakfast we see mothers and children converging outside of the gates at Friendship Court, a subsidized housing development in Charlottesville. In their rumpled t-shirts and sweat pants, the women look as tired as I am. The morning is cool and misty, evoking fall. The kids have scrubbed brown faces, teeth missing, and stiff new backpacks on their narrow shoulders.
The school bus is yellow, imposing, and all the woman look excited and terrified as it stops before them. The red sign blinks; the children rush in, dazzled. The women wave into the dark windows, smiling toothy smiles beneath wet eyes. In my rear view mirror I can see them still waving, even after the school bus rounds the corner.
Today is my first day too, 1/2 time teaching elementary art. Wish me luck. Also, here’s a link to a very short story I wrote, aptly titled First Day, published in Rumble in September 2005
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Filed under motherhood, photographs, writing | Comments (2)other people’s children
William, 14 months old
Photo by Billy
At my first staff meeting, there were twenty-some teachers, all women, sitting at low elementary school tables; the principal—the only man—stood with his sleeves rolled up, his fingers poised over his power point presentation, as we introduced ourselves.
Nearly every teacher spoke of her children: one woman’s voice broke when she talked of her boy going off to Montana for college; another confessed that this summer, for the first time, she let her teen-aged daughter drive herself to swim practice at 5 o’clock am every morning (while she, the mother, lay in bed whispering prayers against deer on the road). The youngest teacher was just married, apple cheeked, and talking of her honey moon, still you could nearly see babies brewing in her eyes.
Foolishly, I had thought it all would settle, like a bright crush on a boy that dissolves into ordinary love. But these mothers were still exhausted, flushed, tearful at their grown baby’s lives.
After the meeting, before I picked William up from Billy, I rushed back to my art room, hung posters of Frida Kahlo with hummingbirds and thorns and the organic shapes of Henri Matisse, preparing the room lovingly for other people’s children.
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Filed under motherhood, photographs | Comments (2)peeps
William and his grandma, chilling
Photos by Billy
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Filed under family matters, photographs | Comment (1)bittersweet
William, 15 months old
Photos by Billy
William has nearly given up nursing this week; except for first thing in the morning, he turns his head away like “no thank you.” I’m excited to have this bit of my body back, and I only envisioned nursing my boy for his first year. Still, for me, breastfeeding made manifest this connection between us.
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Filed under motherhood, photographs | Comment (1)the best part of the day
Photo by Billy
The best part of the day is in the morning, when Will wakes up and makes that first sound—more a hearkening than a cry—like “Hey, where are you? Hellooo?” Then when I walk in, he steps pack from the crib rail and holds his arms up in the shape of a Y.
The best part is when, mid morning, Will gets lost in playing with some cliche thing—pots and pans for instance; and he’s banging away, and then he stops and looks up to see if I’m seeing him. And if I am, he seems so joyful that I am there to witness.
Or in the afternoon, when I’m reading to him. When I’m nearly to the end of some board book I’ve read about a million consecutive times:The Snowy Day or My Car or some such; Just as I am about to flip the page, Will says “beep, beep” because he already knows the words too and is already ready to smile for them.
The best part of the day is in the evening, just when the sunlight is beginning to falter, and Will lets out this simple cry, like “It’s time, Mama.” Then easily he lets me gather him. Easily he rests his heavy head against my shoulder. I hold tightly, rocking for a moment. I stay a moment longer so that my arms ache a bit with his weight. Then I lay him gently down to sleep.
A friend of a friend is conducting survey on celebrities for her doctoral program in communications. It’s pretty entertaining, doesn’t take long to complete, and is completely anonymous. You can check it out here if you’d like.
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