Night Duty

I slip in the door after band practice.  It’s dark in the house, but not quiet – I hear the baby fussing from a back room.  I let my bag slide through my fingers, fumble my way through the dark, homing in on the sound of my sweet, lovely boy, who is crying (I can tell this) because he was wakened by something and wants to be asleep again.

It is hard to see in the dark, my eyes confounded by the lightning show put on by the weather gods, but there is a silhouette to guide me.  Patrick, fumbling, sleepy, is holding our protesting boy and murmuring softly to him.  They are together by the crib.  I wrap my arms around both of them and rest my head on my husband’s shoulder, a family hug.  Jack sounds fed up with life, with being awake.  Without a word between us the baby moves from Patrick’s arms into mine, and I tuck his protesting little face into my neck and smother him in a mama hug.  We walk, up the hall, down the hall, up the hall, down the hall, a little midnight softshoe, steps as quiet as I can make them.  He tucks his thumb into his mouth and quietly cries around it, snakes his other arm around my neck, and over the minutes as I sway and shushhh, I feel his body relax into mine.  Then he is breathing heavily, mouth open, and his thumbnail is barely resting on his lower lip.  He still grips the hair at the base of my neck, his mama handle (dad’s hair is too short for this, the lucky man), but the rest of him is totally slack now, relying on me not to drop him, trusting me not to drop him.

Eventually I do, I must, drop him slowly and smoothly into his crib, but before this I let the moment hang like (and I know this is a ridiculous comparison, but it is what I think of at the time) the crescent moon in his dinosaur board book – impossibly silver and glittering, sharp, far away, plain and lovely.  Dinosaur, Dinosaur, stop tromping all around.  The silver moon is rising.  It’s time to settle down.

I stand with him as long as I reasonably can in the lightning-lit room.  When it’s time, I put him down in his crib.  I lie down on the bed next to my husband, tuck my hands under my ear, and in a few minutes am asleep.