The following morning, Lydia walked into the hospital room with a cup of coffee and an expression of lingering annoyance. Julian didn’t yell at her and he didn’t start a fight; he simply turned the screen of his phone toward her and played the footage.
“This way of living ends today,” he said in a quiet, steady voice that allowed for no argument.
Lydia tried to dismiss the video as a one time accident at first, but the look in Julian’s eyes told her that the old rules no longer applied. “I am not going to ignore our children anymore, and things are going to change starting this very minute,” he added firmly.
The transformation of their home did not happen in a single night. Julian took a long leave of absence from his firm and struggled through the daily reality of parenting.
He made plenty of mistakes with the cooking and the cleaning, but the important thing was that he remained present. Whenever Penelope tried to jump up to handle a chore out of habit, he would gently place a hand on her shoulder and stop her.
“You do not have to carry this burden anymore,” he told her one evening. “I want you to just focus on being a child.”