The hot summer night is made easier on my bicycle.

Everywhere are whiffs of hot dog vendors and cigarettes and warm car exhausts. Armies of girls link arms waddling together in high heels. Drake is playing from the speakers of a Jeep Wrangler, a shitty punk band is heard through the door of a seedy bar and a homeless man is shouting at no one. Rowdiness is in a state of normality. I ride slowly through the scenes playing the role of an extra in all the tiny stories of the city. Dundas and Bathurst, Queen and Ossington, Richmond and John. Little moments of high significance happening all around me. I cruise along.

I have a rare weekend alone. Rachael and my baby girl are off visiting a friend in British Columbia while I stay back. I vacation into a past life of irresponsibility and solitude. I saw friends, saw live bands, saw the bottom of empty pint glasses. However, on this night I prefer to stay in the background and just observe the wild city around me through my growing lens of fatherhood. As I continue to pedal through the Saturday night ruckus I see spots that had personal meaning, altered by the flux of a city. A bar that used to be there, a piece of graffiti gone, a park with more people than I would have liked. Same, but different.

It is strange being away from my two girls. Can joy and sadness occupy the same feeling? Does nostalgia have to be the enemy of content? I’d trade every snooze button and bar crawl for my daughter’s morning cuddle but that doesn’t mean I can’t relish in a couple worry-free nights out with some old pals. Because the large majority of my friends have zero kids and a vague understanding of the rituals of parenting, these nights can feel like a jump to a time before I knew I’d be raising a child. But no matter how much I boogie into the evening, I can never shake the thoughts and pull of my baby girl. I can never loose my dada-ness. So on a weekend like that one, I straddle two spaces. I bike on.

I think of all the moments I am missing with her. Each step is still a novelty, each sound from her mouth is an evolving knowledge of the world. My bed feels bigger but emptier. My days are less predictable but less comforting. She looks too old in the pictures sent to me from a far. I am embracing the traditional parent reflection that they grow up too fast.

I think of Rachael. I’ve had weekends like this since our baby was born, mainly due to the fact that she has visited her family in Ottawa on a couple occasions without me. I’ve had breathers of alone time, days of reflection and the coupled rejuvenation from the wear and tear of parenting. She has not. 14 months straight of mom. I could write many posts about the ease of fatherhood in the face of motherhood, but the marathon of only subtle breaks is something every man should respect.

We still live a life of excitement with our daughter. Parenting does not mean that you hang up your party shoes and throw away any sense of unpredictability. We have taken her to concerts and changed diapers in bars (responsibly of course). We’ve slept out in tents and flown across the country. Yet life changes drastically when you have a baby no matter how many people try and convince you that it might not change that much. This is a good thing for many reasons that I have and will continue to advocate for. But that doesn’t mean that a hungover and directionless bike ride on a Saturday night can’t still be fully enjoyed.