6:30 am. One bedroom door slams. Then another. Kids are scream-crying. Mom is crying behind one of those slammed doors, quieter but just as desperate. Dad was hoping to sleep until his alarm rang, but there will be no such extravagance today.

6:35 am. Dad slowly gets out of bed and stumbles across the hall in his boxers to hold and hear his distraught children. When he returns to the bedroom, Mom is in bed, spurting bursts of tears and anger, like a poorly-contained science experiment. Dad sinks back in bed to hold and hear the despair, and to quietly wonder how long this season of life will call on him to be more, always more.

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Father’s Day was sweet and satisfying this year. We ate out at The Maple Counter for breakfast, shared gifts, and watched soapbox car racing on YouTube. As I was thinking about my husband, Michael, and how fortunate I am to parent with him, it occurred to me that perhaps as difficult and meaningful as it is to be a father, it is equally difficult and meaningful to be the husband of a mother.

A mother is immersed in emotions she often doesn’t understand. She sleeps much less than advised for mental and physical well-being. She is drenched with guilt and fear, which sometimes masquerade as control. A mother is on call 24/7—for days, weeks, months, years. She is on call for baby cries and soiled clothes, doctor appointments and play dates and skinned knees, temper tantrums and broken hearts, scissor and glue supervision, holding hands and finding shoes and wiping faces that don’t want to be wiped.

Who would sign up to be a support person to a mother? Such a person will be called upon to understand in times that defy understanding. They will bear witness to exhaustion, weeping, anger, and a beautiful body that is tired of being touched. They may endure the pain of watching a once-energetic woman become a hollow, methodical soul who can’t summon the energy to answer a question and has forgotten how to have fun. They will watch a mother pour hours into the planning and executing of a birthday party and have no capacity left for a goodnight kiss. They may stand by feeling helpless. They may step in to help and be criticized or ignored. They will be the object of resentment simply because they sleep a whole night or eat lunch while it’s still hot.

To stand with a mother, to witness her life, to love her, is a difficult prospect indeed.

Michael loved me as his wife for seven years before we were parents. He has loved me nearly 11 years as a mother. The demands on my time and emotions are less now than they were in the early years, but they will never end. I will always be a mother; my loving attention will never be only his again. He will witness the lives of our daughters not only as their father, but as a husband to their mother. He will forever be on this ride defined by unexpected turns and raw hearts, the kind of ride that remakes you with or without your permission, and invites you deep into love. Husband of a mother.

To all the men who love a mother, and to my husband especially: thank you.
Thank you for noticing.
Thank you for staying.
And thank you, too, for being selfish and annoying and knuckle-headed.
I couldn’t bear to be imperfect alone.