A couple of days ago I was in a horrible mood. Overwhelmed and angry, I felt like the world was conspiring against me. It wasn’t of course, but if you had tried pointing out my delusional thinking I would’ve ripped your head off.
Just as I was in the middle of throwing myself a rocking pity party my wife and daughter came home. The moment Natalie ran through the door laughing I found her innocent happiness disconcerting. “Oh kid,” I thought to myself, “You have no idea how screwed up the world is.” Part of me wanted to run out the door and find a bar. I didn’t want to expose my kid to the toxic stuff flowing through my veins. I needed to commiserate with adults and bitch about poor old me. But when you’re a Dad you can’t always do that.
“Uppa!” Natalie shouted. “Uppa!”
Stuffing my feelings down I picked Natalie up and gave her a kiss. “How was your day, dear?” My question was rewarded with a stream of babble.
“She didn’t take a nap all day,” my wife said. “And she’s wired. I thought she was going to bust out of her car seat.”
“I’ll take her outside for a while,” I said. “Let her burn off some steam.”
“You do that and I’ll make dinner.”
“Okay.”
“You all right?” Annie said. “You look weird.”
“Bad day.”
I carried Natalie to the backyard and the moment I put her down she ran across the lawn screaming and laughing. Oh brother, I thought. Is someone monitoring this kid’s sugar intake?
Natalie chased the dogs, jumped on her toy house, slid down its tiny slide, blew bubbles, looked at bugs and kicked a ball around. As I watched her I began to feel my blood pressure drop and my troubles fade away. Looking at my house I could see my wife in the kitchen preparing dinner and heaved a deep breath. There are people who would give anything to have what I have. I forget that sometimes.
I felt a raindrop hit my cheek and looked up. The eastern sky was gunmetal grey and a cold wind was beginning to tear the leaves off the trees. Thunder rumbled ominously. Sensing the violence in the sky, Buster limped by and made a beeline for the back door. Knowing I didn’t have much time I picked Natalie up and threw her in the air, played airplane and flipped her upside town. Then I held her hands and spun her around. When I put her back down on the ground she giggled as she walked around dizzily. Once she recovered she ran back towards me and held her hands up. She wanted to ride the ride again.
Spinning Natalie around I looked down at her face. As the world whirled around us her eyes were scrunched shut and she was smiling. A shutter clicked in my mind and I knew that image of my daughter’s sweet, happy face would stay with me forever. Nothing, not dementia, Alzheimer’s or the fires of hell would ever take it from me. We all have moments like that, moments that get fused into our souls.
The rain began to fall and I brought Natalie inside. After we finished dinner I poured myself a drink and turned on Sesame Street. As Natalie sang about the letter of the day, counted with the Count and danced with Elmo the rain outside was falling so hard that branches were crashing into the street. As the wind shook the windows the darkness that had grasped me earlier threatened to return.
The storm reminded me that nature is cruel and violent. Disease stalks us with implacable patience; animals eat their young and black holes rip stars apart. Bodies burn in time’s flame and tsunamis sweep lives away. And don’t get me started about human nature with all its greed, brutishness and stupidity. I lay awake at night worrying about how Natalie will handle the big, bad world.
As I sipped my drink a guitar started playing on the television and children begin to sing. Natalie started hopping up and down and I found myself singing along. It was an old song, a song I sang when I was a child. I’m sure you remember Ernie singing it.
Somebody come and play
Somebody come and play today
Somebody come and smile the smiles
And sing the songs
It won’t take long
Somebody come and play today
Somebody come and play
Somebody come and play my way
Somebody come and rhyme the rhymes
And laugh the laughs
It won’t take time
Somebody come and play today
Somebody come with me and see the pleasure in the wind
Somebody come before it gets too late to begin.
Before it gets too late to begin. Those words struck home. Most of my life I’ve thrashed around without a plan. I married late and had children late. I can’t tell you how many people I know who are struggling to find love, have children or buy a house. Me? I’ve stumbled into every good thing I have. I didn’t earn love or a child. It was all given to me. Someone once said that justice is getting what you deserve, mercy is not getting what you deserve and grace is getting what you don’t deserve. If that’s the case, grace is the defining aspect of my life.
Looking out the window I think about nature and grace. They stand separate yet connected; complementing and colliding with each other in ways I’m too small to understand. The struggle of life is to try and understand them both but we never will. Existence, despite our science and logic, will always be mysterious. It’s a hell of a ride but sometimes grace asks you to come out and play. That’s when you see something like a child’s smile as her father whirls her around. You get a glimpse of something wonderful and life becomes sweet. I hope Natalie tastes that sweetness.
Eventually my daughter started rubbing her eyes so my wife and I gave her a bath, read her a story and tucked her into bed with a bottle. Before long Natalie was fast asleep. A couple of hours later I slipped under the covers and joined my wife in bed. Outside the wind was howling and my dogs were shivering under the bed but I was unperturbed. We needed the rain anyway. As I left the world for the night the last thing I heard was the sound of children singing.
Somebody come and play
Somebody come and play today
Somebody come and be my friend
And watch the sun ’til it rains again
Somebody come and play today
It is a pleasure to watch you mature over these many years.
Steve, you don’t give enough credit to yourself. Grace is also forgiveness, and everybody deserves some type of grace.
A beautiful post as always. Thanks.
In the words of my neighborhood, “Yep, he gets it.” Enjoy the ride. I did.
I love this post! I can so relate to having those super-dark moments when you’re convinced the Universe is conspiring against you. Then suddenly, light breaks through the cracks. Thank goodness.
This should make you chuckle. I’d never heard of you before. Last week I came across your book at work (I work at a public market). There, we have what we call the ‘little library cart’ which is filled with books that have been withdrawn from the library.
So often it’s all about perspective. You could either 1) feel bad that your book was withdrawn from our metro library, or 2) feel happy that it has enriched my life.
How I wish Alzheimers or dementia wouldn’t take these memories from a person.
My MIL forgot who I was for the first time last week. Soon it will be her son.
Sorry to lower the tone – hope you’re feeling better today!
“moments that get fused into our souls.” And sometimes words do. Thank you for succinctly capturing what makes us human. Over the past couple of weeks I, too, have had moments like you and have found solace in the idea of grace. Your words also reminded me of a passage from “All the Kings Men”:
“And perhaps, too, that day I first saw myself as a person. But that is not what I am talking about. What happened was this: I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind which become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters.”
I used to read your blog many, many years ago.
Came back here today and I read about your little girl and happiness and somehow, more than the Ernie song, that made me feel a little bit better about the world my little girl will have to live in.
Like Uma I read your blog many years ago and just came back. I too was in a dark spot, feeling crappy. I am recovering from leukemia with some tough side effects. But I am looking out my window at a beautiful scene, reminding myself I am still here, and have enjoyed my children as your have, therefore I have much to be grateful for. Thanks for some great revelation today.
Beautiful. I’m a long-time (ago) reader, and I was browsing over some old journal entries and decided to see what you are up to. Congrats on living a life of stress without losing your focus on that which is really important. In the immortal words of Arnold: “I’ll be back.”
Thanks for post. Have been reading you for more years than either of us might care to contemplate, but somehow lost touch for last half dozen years. Good to come back to see this. I was told many years ago that “justice is when we do get what we do deserve, mercy is when we do not get what we do deserve, and grace is when we do get what we do not deserve”. Here’s to the unmerited gifts.
I just found you via Amazon! Keep writing please!
“We all have moments like that, moments that get fused into our souls.” Wonderful description of what keeps me sane and alive.
When is a fiction book on the cards? Your writing has improved over the years of this blog but it is your spirit which seeps through the canvas of this crazy world so make sense of our daily life.
Think about it !