Midnight Man Time

Dear Valor: Letters to My Son (#5)

Dear Valor,

You are now, today, two months old. It’s 5:30am as I write, so, technically another 14 hours and 50 minutes till your two-month birthday. It was 8:20pm. In the tub, in the living room, where now we walk in circles every day, around and around till you fall asleep.

Or not.

Right now, you are in bed next to me, on your back, awake. You are, for the most part, content. Not cooing, exactly, but grunting. Sounds like you’re trying to lift or push something very heavy. Grunting is okay. I would know if it weren’t okay. You’d make it clear. You don’t leave us guessing.

If only we were all still so honest, so willing to ask for help, to reveal how we really feel. You’re helping me remember.

We had a moment earlier this night, me and you. I had you with me in the other room, this room, while your mom slept in our bedroom. The routine we’ve figured out is that you and I sleep in here together for the first shift, then when you wake up hungry around midnight I’ll feed you from the bottle, then we’ll sleep some more, till 2 or 3 or sometimes 4am. This way, your mom gets a better night’s rest, and I get to nurse you, which is kind of my new favorite thing to do.

This time, though, you took the silicon nipple into your mouth, started guzzling, hard, and choked on the flow. This happens sometimes. Your body knows how to clear it. You coughed and hacked and screamed, and once you’d saved your own life, you began to cry. I held you, burped you on my shoulder, then tried the bottle again. You weren’t into it. I kept trying, and you kept crying, and I started to get frustrated. This only made you cry harder.

Your cries are lacerating, man. They crack into my heart like a whip. Once you get going, it’s hard to stay centered. Stay cool. Everything in me screams “Do something! Make it stop! Save him!”

But you were inconsolable. You wouldn’t take the milk, the magical answer to all our problems. Still, though, I kept trying.

I’m embarrassed to admit I started to get angry. Angry? Me, a full grown man, angry at a baby? Thrown off my center by teeny tiny little you? Well, the truth is, you’re not as small as you seem. Your power is the true and effortless and unstoppable kind. You don’t try. You’re just yourself. Perfectly, truly, always yourself. There’s nothing more powerful than that. Except maybe those pipes of yours.

So, I have to be in my power when I’m with you, since you’re in yours. That’s how it works. You demand the truth. I have to be who I really am. Who am I, really? Am I really this anger? This crazy-eyed guy inside me, all flexed and bulging, bellowing, “DRINK…THE FUCKING…MILK!!!” I didn’t let that guy out, but he was in there and I’m sure you felt him.

But that guy isn’t me. Or, he’s not the deeper truth of me. The deeper truth, under the anger in this case, was…I just really wanted to nurse you, dude. I love nursing you. I love our midnight man time. You and your mom nurse all the time. That connection must be amazing. We don’t get it like that, me and you. That midnight milking, you know, that was kind of our thing.

Feeling you settle into my arms. Watching your eyes get drifty. Hearing your milky coos. Knowing that I am offering you life and that you are taking it, voraciously. The pause between swallows gets longer and longer, and soon you are asleep in daddy’s arms and everything is good, everything is right and going to be all right, that’s how it feels, the whole universe humming in harmony.

But no, not this time. The whole universe, at midnight just a few hours ago, was agony and discord, terror and deprivation. The milk was right there, bro, right at your lips. Everything you needed to get back to peace, just waiting for you to suck and receive. But alas, you had other plans for us tonight, and so we descended, you and I, into our own little hell together, and there we stayed until your angel mother came down to join us, gathered you in her arms, offered you her breast, and ahhhh, there we go, there you went, back to heaven again.

“Go ahead and get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll take him.”

So I had to let you go. It won’t be the last time, I know. I will keep letting you go, I promise. And when I can’t, when it’s too painful, too scary, I promise to get the help I need: to get out of your way, to follow your lead, to trust the flow of where you know you need to go. I promise never to force the milk. And when I do force it, I promise to investigate myself, to seek out the cosmic nipple that’s right there in my own mouth, waiting for me to receive the milk of truth, of peace, of whatever I might need in that moment in order. I promise to remember that you will always come back, that you are always with me, as I am always with you.

Enough of these words. I’m gonna hold you now. You’ve been in bed by yourself, next to my desk, the whole time I’ve been writing this letter. We’re due for some chest on chest, skin on skin. And whaddya know, you just sent out a cry, to the universe, to me. You’re feeling it, too. It’s time for daddy.

Or maybe mommy. Yeah, it’s probably mommy.

Love,

Dad

P.S. It was mommy.