Is My Baby Growing Up Without a Daddy

Is My Baby Growing Up Without A Daddy?

As I stood in front of the mirror staring at my reflection while debating on whether or not age brings wisdom as so many say, I realized my face looks older than it did a couple of years ago. I still remember the pain from a year ago, when I realized, finally, things were not going to go my way. It was hard. Giving birth to my daughter had been the culmination of all pain I had felt within the last nine months. I had put nine months of energy into thinking and feeling painful things; physical, emotional, and spiritual. I never wanted to have a baby alone. While looking in the face of my beautiful black child with hair the color of cinnamon and skin the color of pecans, I thought: “She looks so much like him.” I had thought she would not come for another four years. She came happy and healthy. I know many things could have been.

With mixed feelings I let the nurse take her away. While the doctor finished with me, my mind was within my heart and its core of pain. My dam had another crack. Later that day, I felt the urge to rush to my child. I was afraid that my child would be snatched from me before I would have the chance to be a good mother. I felt ashamed because I did not readily embrace her after her entrance into the coldness. With a sense of urgency and panic, I rushed to the nursery and to my baby. While looking into her face, I wanted to cry, but was afraid my tears would drown me. The dam was crumbling. Soon, I was able to flee from the hospital. I had been there too long.

Later as I talked to him, his words ripped through my heart, and it was then I accepted what I knew of her daddy. He would not be there. It was then that I began to doubt he ever would. I felt debilitating pain, and I cried to God to remove it, for I had it too long. I had committed myself to something that was not, and my hopes came crashing down like a building demolished. The explosion surged through me forcing the tears from my heart, and the river flowed. It was swift and raging. That fragile dam came crumbling, crumbling down. I had to stop the river, for I was drowning and needed some help. I prayed and begged for help. Is it really that bad? Is it really a frivolous matter, these things, I felt. I decided that the answer was not so important because these are things I felt. Is this what I must learn: You will survive and you will go on, this is a part of life; this is a part of life? Did you not know all would turn out this way? Did you have evidence to the contrary? At that moment, I began to heal as I looked into my toddlers face, so much like his. I asked myself, “Does he want to be a father to her?” I was angry at my feelings, then angry at him, who did not know the meaning of the word he used so freely; at him, who did not owe me an explanation; at him the coward and uncommitted one. I searched for the answers to my question, only one came and not too soon. He did not choose me. His not choosing me was enough and was something I could understand, but his not choosing his daughter became too much. I asked myself a thousand times. “Does my daughter’s father understand the importance of fatherhood? And it saddened me to know what I felt about that question. The door was open, but he would not walk through it.
Perhaps one day I will come upon that man who is willing to commit. A man who will commit the way I understand it. I think I have learned the true meaning of love. It is not something that just happens; it is something that comes after commitment, time, and patience.
I have no intention to fight the battle of blackness alone. My daughter will of course be well rounded and stable; this, I have little doubts about. I have my much needed support group. If I say that true and good fatherhood is not important, I would tell a lie. I want my child to reap the rewards of fatherly support and love, but being in a good relationship with a man is not the best thing life has to offer. Still I often ask myself. “Is my baby growing up without a daddy?” The answer is yes, for now.