Thoughts on Faith, Fatherhood and Creativity.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 My son has enormous brown eyes smooth, plump cheeks, and a little button chin that can melt your heart like butter in the microwave When you blow raspberries in his neck his giggles spill over like a waterfall and your melted-butter-heart explodes with joy My son has fresh eyes for the world a wide, open heart and I cannot tell him how much I love him cannot kiss, cuddle, tickle, snuggle-the-poop out of him anywhere near enough I have an abundance of that weird, want-to-squeeze-and-use-naughty-words-to-describe-the-intensity-of-my-love kind of love (You know the one right?) My son also has a blood curdling stomach churning brain deafening wild banshee scream with sharp, prickly edges that can endure, repeat and build in intensity for small windows of forever Imagine it for me: start with one minute - ask someone you know and love to scream at the top of their lungs for one minute Done? unpleasant but not that big a deal. Now, ask them to do it for 15 minutes. you can cuddle the participating loved one if you want but they have to keep screaming Less fun but you are strong and patient and super zen and no simple scream is going to phase you particularly not from a loved one with enormous brown eyes, smooth, plump cheeks and waterfall giggles Now try, 45 minutes in the confined cabin of a car which you are driving in peak hour traffic no cuddles you can talk sing change the radio station play gentle lullabies or fascinating podcasts wind the windows down or up but the screaming isn’t going to stop. Still feeling super zen? Now try, one hour in the middle of the night. or just the whole night. or basically every whole night for several months on end This is reflux disease. I know there are elements of what I have just described that are part and parcel of every experience of parenthood but when every feeding experience is followed by burning acid travelling up your little one’s throat and horrendous screams that are only calmed down by feeding which leads to more burning acid more screams etc it does magnify things a little turns the entree into a 9 course degustation the window becomes the house the puddle becomes an ocean and there are these moments when the convulsing bundle in your arms or in the back of your car is scraping fingernails all over your chalkboard heart peeling back layers of your sanity and in these moments, you feel and think crazy things things I struggle to even write down and you realise even loving your own flesh and blood can be pretty complicated pretty bloody hard at times and it’s one thing to melt over those enormous brown eyes plump cheeks and button chin but how I respond to, wait with, talk to, stick around for, don’t throw, cry with this little screamer in my arms... this has more to teach me about love than cuteness does this is where a parent grows muscles through gritted teeth sometimes love might look more like not throwing your baby across the room than cuddles, kisses and raspberries My son has fresh eyes for the world a wide, open heart and I cannot tell him how much I love him cannot kiss, cuddle, tickle, snuggle-the-poop out of him anywhere near enough My son also has a blood curdling stomach churning brain deafening wild banshee scream with sharp, prickly edges that can endure, repeat and build in intensity for small windows of forever And I love him to bits.
2 Comments
Trish Forrest
4/9/2016 05:39:09 pm
That's a great Idea will, I wish I had done something like that for my children. I intend to do it for my Grandchildren. What people said is so true. by the time we got to number 4 the photos got less, but everything else was the same, the love, the time you spend with them,
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