A few nights ago my son was crying. He’d been difficult all night and we decided that we couldn’t keep giving into tantrums, that we weren’t doing him any favors by not letting him work through these things on his own. As the crying continued our eyes met and I found in them a deep, pleading desire that stung and brought my own tears. Memories of begging and pleading unfurled as I recalled wanting my father to understand some plea. To listen, to see how much I needed him to bend to what I needed.
While the memory is vivid, the circumstances are not. I can’t judge whether or not my father should have given in. I only have the residual loneliness lying dormant, lying in wait. I search inside for the answers to how to best raise my child but there are only soft, squishy lines.
As I bend to pick up my little one, to hug him, I’m left hoping our best is good enough. When he calms down and looks at me with damp blue eyes I see relief and curiosity. He is warm from crying and I kiss his plump, pink cheeks hugging him closer. I give him what the little girl in me wanted, further deepening the hollowness of my loss. I wish and plead even now that my dad could come back. That I could talk to him again. That he could meet my son and so I could ask him why.
freckledinklings 