Please

I've read that when you're a recovering alcoholic, you feel like you can't get involved with anyone who hasn't been an addict, who hasn't tried to kick it, because it's this defining experience in your life and you're unable to relate on your deepest level with anyone who can't understand it.

I guess having a kid is kind of like that. You get the nods in the grocery store, at the mall, in restaurants. You're part of a club when you have a kid. Just when you think you're never going to be able to go out again, a waitress rescues you with a kind word, a distraction, a hateful glance at the other muttering patrons, and later she tells you about her own kids.

Yeah, it has to do with having gone through it yourself, that compassion, but there's something more.

***

The other night, The Bug was sleeping on my shoulder. I could feel his chest expanding against my own, and his little breaths on my neck. Sometimes, he would catch his breath and sigh. And this idea, this notion, that I had made something that had lungs and could breathe on its own, was so outer limits that it boggled my mind. Maybe I lived my adult life too far away from the experience, but I'm sure every sane parent feels it, this wonder.

***

Tonight he was asleep on my shoulder again, and I went through all the different sensations. Like, the smallness of his back, the warmth from his neck, the breath on my skin. I got up to put him in his crib and the panic seized me, like it does lately. It happens so often that I almost don't hear myself when I start to pray.

I remembered my parents, praying with me, all through my youth, on our knees at the couch and beside our beds and on the carpet at church. I always thought we did it because we were Christians, and never realized that all over the world, people were praying for their families.

All my prayers,

no bad dreams, only sweet dreams, always

don't let him be hurt

healthy and happy

let him live a long life

came out all at once in one word, over and over.