what is everything
will you not do that ever bedever?
Dear Z -
By the time I’ve sat down here at night, you’re asleep, and my mind has become mush. All the clever things you said today and yesterday flit about like a dream upon waking, present but aloof.
But this isn’t meant to be a catalogue of what you say so much as an ongoing soliloquy spoken to a quiet audience that feels farther and farther away.
I’ve read a lot about how we develop through the stages of life and how the thresholds between them can look and feel. I feel like a student of traditions lost to capitalism and time. I’ve spent even more time working to build new rites of passage for myself and others, that we might step more intentionally through these thresholds: into and out of adulthood, marriage, fatherhood, retirement. I’ve sat with men as they’ve learned how to let loss become grief and how to give it all back to the earth.
And I’ve been right here with you as you’ve learned to play and eat and think and move and communicate and party and read and run and express your love for flowers and fire trucks and dragging your feet in the water while riding on the paddleboard with me.
Why am I saying all this?
Truth is that I’ve been feeling midlife courting me like some winged calligraphic monster from a folk tale, riding the north wind and swooping behind clouds when I look up but beating its wings extra hard to make sure I hear it coming.
It’s my heart that’s beating.
And I’m doing my best to not resent the feeling that my body feels twenty years older than it is, and that the last decade feels stolen by chronic pain and a pandemic - but in the middle of it you arrived into this messy world and rearranged everything.
You gifted me a keel, little man. A north star. A reason to learn to run again.
You were nearly four years old when I was finally able to run faster than you.
Last weekend I returned from a couple of days away and slid open the big door of the sprinter van. You appeared at the door and we sat in the daytime and chatted. It was the first real warm day of the year. You told me about the birthday festival, how you stayed up and partied, and traded monster trucks with another kid.
We talked for a while. There were no boundaries or teaching moments, no timers or agenda or things to get to. You questioned whether I was going to go away forever and leave you.
What if you wanted to move away, you asked.
I would bring you with me, of course.
What about mama?
I’m not leaving you, monkey. I may not always be right next to you, but I’m always here.
And one more thing: You are not a burden to me, son. Never have been. Never will be.
until tomorrow, kiddo.