Association: free. Puff-painted STDs: priceless.

I think about the dead when I'm holding Ben, when the house is quiet and the room is dark and there's nowhere else I should be.  It's the only time I really do, waiting for him to finish a feeding or to drop back into sleep.  It's hard to fit in otherwise.  The days are busy and I'm seldom alone.  My grief is catch-as-catch-can.

I hold him and think of my dad, who died before Ben was conceived, and of my aunt, who died just after his birth.  I'd have thought it would make me sad, to hold what I've gained beside what I've lost.  I'm surprised by how peaceful I find it. 

It's enough of a balm that once he's asleep, I often sit longer than strictly necessary.  I did this last night at his bedtime.  I'd been thinking of my aunt, and how she'd have laughed at the series of posters I'd seen in the halls of the high school that morning where they'd held a family fun day. (Nothing says "Use a condom" like glitter-glued pompoms, I always say.)

From there via free association, I was off to my dad.  I was thinking about an awful year in college when I failed all my classes, caught a few STDs, and went a little crazy, and how humane he was when I told him I needed a therapist.  There's no shame, he said, in needing help.  Sometimes, he told me, we all do.

And from college I zipped off to Shakespeare, and the summer I spent on campus with my Riverside.  I was thinking about how cold the comedies left me, how sinister and mean some of them seemed to me, but how ferociously I'd loved the histories.  And then I heard Paul and Charlie in the hall, getting ready for Charlie's bath.

Charlie was playing with a calculator.  I could hear him wittering brightly to Paul about it.  (I wished, as I usually do at bedtime, for a lower volume or thicker walls.)  And then, puzzled, "Dad, I don't know what happened.  Look."

I suppose he showed Paul the calculator, because Paul then explained that the screen said, "ERROR."  "That means there's a problem," he said.

"I was just making numbers," Charlie said sadly.

"Sometimes it happens when you push a strange combination of buttons," Paul said.  He must have taken the calculator and pressed the clear button, because then I heard him tell Charlie, "There.  Now you can make all the numbers you want."

And he just said it so kindly.  And Charlie was just so pleased.  I can't quite explain why this hit me so hard, this commonplace exchange, except that it is so commonplace.  So absolutely ordinary.  I didn't think I'd get this, one son made happy by the simplest contrivance, another sleeping soundly through the cheerful noise of it.  The force of it was almost physical.

And so then I was back again at Shakespeare, thinking of a line I hate to hear quoted out of context, so thoroughly does the meaning get mangled.  Now is the winter of our discontent, it begins, and that's where people tend to stop, and, egad, how depressing is that?

But it actually goes on:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.

And it's a pun, of course; that sun of York isn't only a metaphor but a person, a son of the house of York.  That the eponymous Richard III is being snarky in these lines, and that he was kiiiind of a rat bastard overall, isn't important at the moment.  That he speaks of glory is.  (Apparently I can decontextualize with the best of them.)

So there I was, sitting in the dark crying, not out of sadness, not for who's gone, but with wonder at who I have, with the winter of my own discontent, years I prefer not to think of now, magically made summer by these sons of ours.  (I get a little grandiose in the dark.  And, as it happens, in blog posts.)  And laughing a little again, because is there anything not funny about GENITAL HERPES in eight-inch glittery bubble letters?  And trying not to wake the baby as I chortled.

I am so lucky.  I am so lucky.

Posted by Julie at 11:07:26 PM in I've learned a lot...but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Comments

Association: free. Puff-painted STDs: priceless.

I think about the dead when I'm holding Ben, when the house is quiet and the room is dark and there's nowhere else I should be.  It's the only time I really do, waiting for him to finish a feeding or to drop back into sleep.  It's hard to fit in otherwise.  The days are busy and I'm seldom alone.  My grief is catch-as-catch-can.

I hold him and think of my dad, who died before Ben was conceived, and of my aunt, who died just after his birth.  I'd have thought it would make me sad, to hold what I've gained beside what I've lost.  I'm surprised by how peaceful I find it. 

It's enough of a balm that once he's asleep, I often sit longer than strictly necessary.  I did this last night at his bedtime.  I'd been thinking of my aunt, and how she'd have laughed at the series of posters I'd seen in the halls of the high school that morning where they'd held a family fun day. (Nothing says "Use a condom" like glitter-glued pompoms, I always say.)

From there via free association, I was off to my dad.  I was thinking about an awful year in college when I failed all my classes, caught a few STDs, and went a little crazy, and how humane he was when I told him I needed a therapist.  There's no shame, he said, in needing help.  Sometimes, he told me, we all do.

And from college I zipped off to Shakespeare, and the summer I spent on campus with my Riverside.  I was thinking about how cold the comedies left me, how sinister and mean some of them seemed to me, but how ferociously I'd loved the histories.  And then I heard Paul and Charlie in the hall, getting ready for Charlie's bath.

Charlie was playing with a calculator.  I could hear him wittering brightly to Paul about it.  (I wished, as I usually do at bedtime, for a lower volume or thicker walls.)  And then, puzzled, "Dad, I don't know what happened.  Look."

I suppose he showed Paul the calculator, because Paul then explained that the screen said, "ERROR."  "That means there's a problem," he said.

"I was just making numbers," Charlie said sadly.

"Sometimes it happens when you push a strange combination of buttons," Paul said.  He must have taken the calculator and pressed the clear button, because then I heard him tell Charlie, "There.  Now you can make all the numbers you want."

And he just said it so kindly.  And Charlie was just so pleased.  I can't quite explain why this hit me so hard, this commonplace exchange, except that it is so commonplace.  So absolutely ordinary.  I didn't think I'd get this, one son made happy by the simplest contrivance, another sleeping soundly through the cheerful noise of it.  The force of it was almost physical.

And so then I was back again at Shakespeare, thinking of a line I hate to hear quoted out of context, so thoroughly does the meaning get mangled.  Now is the winter of our discontent, it begins, and that's where people tend to stop, and, egad, how depressing is that?

But it actually goes on:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.

And it's a pun, of course; that sun of York isn't only a metaphor but a person, a son of the house of York.  That the eponymous Richard III is being snarky in these lines, and that he was kiiiind of a rat bastard overall, isn't important at the moment.  That he speaks of glory is.  (Apparently I can decontextualize with the best of them.)

So there I was, sitting in the dark crying, not out of sadness, not for who's gone, but with wonder at who I have, with the winter of my own discontent, years I prefer not to think of now, magically made summer by these sons of ours.  (I get a little grandiose in the dark.  And, as it happens, in blog posts.)  And laughing a little again, because is there anything not funny about GENITAL HERPES in eight-inch glittery bubble letters?  And trying not to wake the baby as I chortled.

I am so lucky.  I am so lucky.