Sad songs

Brad loves music. Ever since we first met, he’s been bringing music into my life. I sit down and see his iTunes list up and click play. It’s Mo Leverett from Desire Street singing about his own son he lost. His strange, scratchy voice tells me of the brief moments he held his son and that with God a day is like a thousand years. But then it’s Dave Wilcox that gets me – “You will always have what you gave to love.”

I’m up again but much earlier because I fell asleep on the couch at 8. I lie awake for an hour hearing this voice, my own voice, in my head. I wonder how long it will take for me to learn just to get up instead of waiting that hour, thinking, listening. I always dread walking down our unlit hallway. I feel like a child afraid of the dark. But as soon as I make it to the end, the blue moonlight washing our living room makes everything feel ok. What will I do when this full moon goes away and takes its light with it? I walk outside. The moon is higher than when I usually wake up and casts dappled light on the right side of our yard. My first thought is that it looks like a graveyard and then I’m surprised that I’m not creeped out. I sit and feel the wind and talk to my baby. I tell him that I’m sorry that this is happening – that I’m sorry his heart and tummy and brain aren’t quite right. I wish I could make it different…

Ella is in our bed tonight. I used to worry when they’d get into bed with us if they were forming a habit and so we’d try and carry them back to their beds. That seems stupid to me, now. I want them so close to me. I put my arm around Ella but she’s restless. She turns away from me. I smile and just accept that even in sleep we struggle with one another. I wonder why with Zane everything feels so natural and easy and with Ella it’s a constant search for the best way to be with her, towards her. Is it personality or birth order or gender or a combination of them all? I wonder what this little boy would be like if he were whole and made it to Zane or Ella’s age? I wonder how I would be with him?

I hear feet, strangely heavy feet…Ella is awake and has found me. She comes and crawls in my lap and says, “Mommy, I want to draw.” OK – and I don’t send her back to bed but welcome her light hearted company as she draws Peter Pan and traces animals and just talks away about being a fairy and about liking to be up with me – “just the girls,” she says. When she needs to go “potty” I don’t mind walking with her. The next room is much darker after the light of a computer screen. I willingly pick her up and carry her through the dark, hitting my own feet on the toys scattered about. If I feel this way about her, then I know that can only be a tiny bit of how God wants to carry me. But does Ella know how much I love her? Will I ever know really that God loves me like that? Don’t our children live in a blissful acceptance of our love – almost taking it for granted?

In the dark Ella asks, “Why are there two girls and two boys in our family?” Because that’s how God made us, Ella.

I’m almost through with Brad’s play list. They’re all sad songs; he’s always had a thing for really sad songs. But, now, they feel so right.