I had a restless sleep last night and it wasn’t due to my conscience, which I’ll have you know, is boringly squeaky clean. Granted, I had some champagne at Barb Howard’s book launch at Cantos plus I enjoyed the brownies, but I don’t see those things keeping me up as I have been known to be a glutton on occasion. Sometimes I find it hard to sleep, frustrated by my passion for writing and the necessity of a day job, not to mention how I don’t have enough time to do as much as I want and I’m certainly not progressing towards my dream of publication of a novel as fast as I should. No, I awoke to three raps on the bedroom door and my dog’s bark at 2am.
My ten-year-old son stood in the dark with his eyes wide apologizing for waking me. He had a nightmare and needed me. Instead of being mad, I was happy. Not for his fear, but for the chance to be the most important thing in his world for a brief time when the world was quiet and we were too.
I crawled into his skinny twin bed and snuggled into his warm side while he haltingly told me about his dream, not able to go into the gory details of a nightmare still too fresh and real. He’s old enough now that I don’t have to tell him that it was just a dream or that mommy is there to protect him. He just needed someone to listen, someone to be there with him so he didn’t have to face the dark alone.
We read some Calvin and Hobbes and then he told me I could go back to bed because he’d be fine. How did my little man become such a big boy? This morning, when I went in to wake my son his light was on, his Calvin and Hobbes lay on the floor and he slept curled up on his side away from the world. He apologized again as I left for work because I might be tired.
I don’t know how I raised such a thoughtful sweet kid, but I’m grateful that occasionally he still needs and appreciates me. I know from the gruff greeting I got from my twelve-year-old son as I woke him that my window of opportunity is shrinking. I can only be the centre of their world and the fixer of all things wrong for a minute moment in time, but I am going to milk it for all it’s worth.
So as I sit here at my day job that affords me money for a home, food and clothes for my kids’ backs, the least of my worries is why I can’t write more. I know my boys will be grown and gone soon enough and I will have lost something I value most - time with them. May they always need me, just a little bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment