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There was something particularly unnerving about pulling up to my house at 1AM on a Wednesday to find nearly every light in the house turned on and music blaring so loudly that I could hear it from the driveway.
Normally, I would have been worried that something had happened, having seen what I’ve seen at my job. The loud music could be a distraction from much worse sounds, and the lights on could be a cry for help.
But as I approached the door, I heard a very familiar two-year-old voice practically screaming the words to ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’ from Disney’s Lion King. In an instant, my concerns, while still present, quickly changed from morbid to lighthearted.
The music was deafening when I opened the door, which I quickly shut behind me to try and spare my neighbors the noise.
What I found inside could only be described as pure chaos.
Toys were strewn all over the floor, with half-empty juice boxes and snack bags on every tabletop I could see. Carefully making my way through the hallway, I tried to restore what little order I could.
I wasn’t mad, though. In fact, I couldn’t stop smiling. As much as I hated clutter and mess, each aberrant object was painting a vivid picture of what exactly my wife had put up with while I was away. I was starting to wonder where exactly she was while I cleared a path to the living room.
But then I saw her. She was curled up on the couch, swaddled in one of my cardigans and desperately clutching a pillow. Another room over, our child had moved on from Lion King to Mulan.
She didn’t even flinch at the rhythmic swells, so fast asleep that if it weren’t for the gentle rising of her chest, I might be worried something was wrong. But no, she was just a very, very tired mother.
And God, did I love her.
Leaning over the back of the couch, I gently ran my hand over her hair. At first, she still didn’t move beyond a small twitch of her lips into a smile at the contact. I couldn’t help but laugh.
The sound, although barely audible over the music, was enough to break through her near-comatose state. She shot up in the couch, almost falling off in the process.
“I’m awake!” she shouted, her voice hoarse and entirely unconvincing.
“Sure you are,” I returned at a quieter volume, resting my forearms on the couch to continue taking in the sleepy sight.
Once she noticed it was me, her entire demeanor changed. The tension fell from her shoulders and her head fell to the side with an exasperated sigh.
“Oh, Spencer, thank fuck you’re home.”
“How are you sleeping through this?”
I noted the bored expression on my wife’s face as she glanced over to the other room, clearly unaffected by the commotion.
She looked back at me equally exhausted before she droned, “Spencer, I have not slept in over 48 hours.”
“What’s happening?”
The look on her face caused guilt to brew in my chest, because I could tell that she was trying to find a way to explain what was happening without letting me blame myself.
Eventually, she must have decided there wasn’t a way, or that she was just too tired to find it. She sighed, pulling the cardigan closer to herself as she turned to rest her head against my arm.
“Your son said he wasn’t going to sleep until you read him a bedtime story. And he is nothing if not true to his word.”
There was something else hidden in this conversation that she was trying to avoid. I understood why; it was the exact reason I felt so guilty.
“For 48 hours? Why didn’t you call me last night?”
Nuzzling into the very limited physical contact of her face on my forearm, she mumbled the words so quietly and slurred that they were barely comprehensible.
“Because I know the case has been really hard on you and I didn’t want to bother you. I figured I could handle it, and that he would get tired eventually, but let me tell you he did not.”
She didn’t like my response. She raised a hand to my face to try and wipe the sad, twisted pout from my lips. Her eyes were barely open and her hair was matted and tangled, but she still managed to look so unbelievably beautiful.
“Well, I’m here now,” I reassured her, resting my hand over hers. “And I think mom has earned a good night’s rest.”
She shook her head at the suggestion, and returned her own pout as she whined, “I missed you so much. I don’t want to go to bed without you.”
The tender moment between us was abruptly interrupted by a very high pitched, excited scream from the doorway.
“Dad’s home?! DAD!”
Before I knew it, our son had launched himself across the room at breakneck speed. I just barely managed to turn in time to catch him as he threw his arms around me.
We toppled to the ground together, his excited grin taking up nearly a third of his face.
“Hey there little man!” I managed to force out despite his entire body weight resting on my ribcage. “I heard you’ve been giving your mom a hard time.”
“Nuh-uh!” he shouted back before turning his little face to glare at his mother, who still sat barely awake on the couch above us.
“Of course not,” I whispered into his ear, “I knew that didn’t sound like you.”
Carefully, I clambered back up to a sitting position so that he wouldn’t have to let go of me. As painful as it was to have a tiny human clinging to my neck, which is only designed to hold up about 60lbs worth of weight, there was no better feeling in the world than hugging my son.
But eventually he let go, sitting back on my lap with a look that was much too sad.
“Dad I’ve been waiting for you to get home for forever.”
I tried not to think about how long a week must feel like for him, because I was sure it did indeed feel like forever. If I was being honest, regardless of how busy the case had kept me, it had been a painfully long time for me to be apart from him as well.
“I was just saying the same thing,” I playfully replied as I took his hands into mine and wondered when they’d gotten so big.
“Let’s stay up all night and play!” he squeaked, his eyes going wide with the false energy his body had stirred up in an attempt to stay awake.
I turned to my wife, whose eyebrows raised in a challenge.
“Don’t look at me. He’s your son.”
I chuckled as she finally got up to go turn off the very unwelcome soundtrack. Turning my attention back to the boy in my lap, I smiled.
“I have a better idea. How about we all get in bed and read stories.”
The suggestion clearly reminded him of the reason he was awake in the first place. Like a little light bulb turned on above his head, he jumped up to try and match my height.
“Oh yeah! That sounds like fun, too!”
“Great. Let’s go.”
Before he could protest, I’d tossed him over my shoulder. His delighted squeals and laughter, while ringing loud in my ear, were so comforting and wonderful to hear. I hoped that I could hear them forever.
It was surprisingly easy for all three of us to settle into the bed, my wife and I each taking a side and cuddling as close as we could. I thanked the cool Virginia air for the perfect excuse to enjoy each other’s company.
I didn’t even care that I was still wearing my dress shirt and slacks. I only barely remembered to kick off my shoes so that all three of us could display our mismatched socks.
And I took a long minute to just watch them, wondering how I ever got so lucky to have a family like this. But my thoughts were disrupted by insistent hands shoving a Dr. Seuss book into my hands.
I glanced down at the title, then back over to my son.
“Really? Again?”
“Yes please!” he beamed while eagerly wiggling between us.
I sighed in a fake exasperation, flipping open the book and proudly announcing, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go! By Dr. Seuss.”
With a dramatic pause, I looked over to him and then back to my wife who happily listened beside him.
“Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!”
We hadn’t even turned the page, but I could see his lids becoming heavy, and his breathing slowed down to the soft, hushed rhymes.
His mother was using her traditional reverse psychology, trying to keep him awake by tickling each body part as we read in the hopes that he wouldn’t try to stay awake any longer. His stubborn nature always ensured that he’d always do the opposite of whatever his mother wanted. She’d said he’d gotten that trait from me, but I think we both knew it had come from her.
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.”
I’d read this story with him so many times, it always passed in such a blur. The colorful pages blended together, the steady rhyming pattern predictable and soothing.
But as we neared the end, my heart sank. Because there was a reason this book was his favorite, and it was the same reason I’d read it to him in the first place. And no matter how many times I’d read it to him, it never got easier.
“All Alone,” I said, the childish, fun voices dropping away.
“Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot.”
Tears stung at my eyes as the graveyard-esque land of the Slump stared back at me. It was silly, I thought, how much the image of a tiny boy donning yellow pajamas alone on a twisting road affected me.
But I saw my son, unable to sleep despite his body begging him to, delirious and pained because he wanted his dad. I’d been that boy before, and I’d always promised myself I would never be that dad.
My wife assured me I wasn’t; that this was different. All I could do was hope that it was true. Because the only thing that mattered to me beyond his safety was that he never had to go to sleep wondering whether his father loved him.
So I tried to shove those feelings back, choosing to focus on the undying pride and confidence I had that he would be a better man than me, just as I had come to believe that I was a better man than my father.
“On and on you will hike,
And I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.”
“I think he’s asleep.”
Her voice was barely a whisper, her half-lidded eyes displaying nothing but love and admiration that I still never quite felt I deserved.
“Oh,” I wiped my eyes to prevent any tears from falling as I gently placed the book on the nightstand. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You can read the rest if you want. I’m still awake.”
The thought forced me to recall many nights we’d spent together before our child. Before the fatigue of sleepless nights associated with an infant and toddler, she’d actually always struggled to fall asleep.
On the really bad nights, I’d read her whatever book she wanted. She had always joked it was the only way to get me to read fantasy at all. She wasn’t entirely wrong. But despite the supposedly amateur writing level, we always had fun.
“It’s been awhile since I last read to you,” I pointed out as I turned to face her.
She draped an arm around our son, and took my hand in hers above him.
“I understand. You’re a very important man.”
Her thumb stroked the back of my hand with a smile that told me she could hear my thoughts. She was begging me to let them go, to be here with us without worrying about what happens when I’m gone.
“I’d be nothing without you two,” I replied honestly, my voice crackling along the way.
“I missed you,” she answered with a solemn smile.
“I missed you, too.“
Together, we settled into our family’s embrace and tried to let go of the pain.
“Okay. My turn,” she said with a wicked grin, “Tell me a story.”
I chuckled back, closing my eyes and humming for a moment while I tried to find the right memory. It didn’t take me very long, because they were all so wonderful. Even just the process of sifting through them filled me with such an undeniable joy.
When I opened my eyes and saw hers staring hopefully back at me, I knew which one she wanted to hear.
“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. The prettiest girl in the whole world. No, actually, the whole universe,” I started, my hand moving slowly up her arm, my eyes roaming whatever parts of her I could see above the blankets. “And one day she met this boy. He was kind of smart, but he was nothing special, really—Not until he met her.”
I could see that she wanted to interrupt me, her eyes narrowing into a cheerful glare. She never did like it when I talked badly about myself, even in the funny land of make believe. But this was my story, so my rules would stand.
“She was the first person to ever look at him and see past his floppy hair and silly socks and cardigans,” I continued with my fingers drawing soothing patterns along her skin. “He fell in love with her so fast, but he was too scared to tell her.”
Each time her eyelids fluttered shut now, they had a harder time opening again. I honestly didn’t know why she bothered staying awake this long. There was nothing I could say that she hadn’t already heard.
But I was also so glad to see her looking back at me, her eyes filled with the very same reverence and overwhelming relief that we were all together again. For a moment, I’d almost forgotten where I was in the story.
I recalled our earliest memories, the way I’d stolen glances at her any chance I could, and she’d pretend like she didn’t notice. She was most beautiful when she didn’t. The quiet, candid moments I held closest to my heart.
“Now, normally this is the part of the story where something happens to give the boy the courage to tell her the truth. But that isn’t what happened in this story,” I explained like she didn’t already know.
The large smile that crept over her cheeks made goosebumps spread over my skin.
“No, because this princess wasn’t the kind of girl to wait around. She was a rather impatient princess, really.”
She brought a swift hand up to my arm and promptly, but lightly, smacked me. But I didn’t let it dissuade me from telling the truth, chuckling softly in an attempt not to wake up the little one wedged between us.
“So, one day, she got tired of waiting and she went looking for that boy. When she found him, she was so overwhelmed with the way she felt that she walked right up to him and kissed him— Just like that!”
I raised my hand with my eyebrows, eliciting a small giggle from the woman I loved more than myself. It was obvious that she was very proud of the fact she’d been the one to make the first move. In fact, she’d regularly reminded me that without her, we might have never even ended up together in the first place.
But there we were, our legs tangled under the same covers, our child tucked snugly between us, while we cheerfully whispered bedtime stories.
“Before the boy could say anything, the princess told him that she loved him.”
“And what did he say?” Her voice, although tired, still maintained that enthusiasm that came with the end of the story.
“He said that he loved her, too. That she was the first thing he wanted to see every morning. He wanted to hold her every time she was happy or sad and kiss her to sleep every night.”
I poured my heart into each word as they flowed from me with ease. There were no more worries, no more fears.
Every single day that we’d been together, she made sure I never forgot how much she loved me. I could only hope that my awkward words and clumsy kisses could return the favor. Running my hand down her jaw, I felt those pesky tears filling my eyes again.
“He promised her that she was the only girl for him, and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.”
“That sounds like a wonderful fairy tale,” she said through a yawn before finally closing her eyes.
For a moment, I thought that would be the end. But without opening her eyes again, she asked one final question.
“Did they get a happily ever after?”
I looked down at the mess of us. A child sleeping soundly with dinner leftovers still caked on his face, wrapped lovingly between his parents who stayed up just a little bit longer so they could have a moment alone before the day was over.
I looked at my wife, who’d clearly already succumbed to sleep before she’d even gotten her answer. I thought about my life, and how it turned out to be better than anything I could have ever hoped.
“They sure did.”