You’ll manage.
As if I were a man who could be trusted to carry anything. As if three newborns were a chore she was handing off before a trip.
Three cribs. Three car seats. Three fevers that always seemed to arrive on the same night.
But she was right about one thing. I managed.
The Father Who Learned Everything
I learned to braid hair before the sun came up – badly at first, then well enough that other mothers at the bus stop asked who did the girls’ French braids.
I sewed Halloween costumes that fell apart by the third house. I packed lunches that got better every year. I learned which daughter hated crusts, which one traded her apple for cookies, and which one secretly gave half her sandwich to a boy who never brought anything.
I sat through three parent-teacher conferences in a single evening, moving from classroom to classroom in the same tired tie. I showed up to every mother-daughter breakfast at their elementary school, the only man in a room full of mothers, because Emma, Sophie, and Claire refused to go without me.
