Tuesday, November 17, 2015

The Real Can't Sleep Love

            

             Lucas Robert Rudd entered the world at 4:30 P.M. on Wednesday, October 7th, 2015. Eight pounds, twelve ounces, 21 inches long and every bit my son.  I’m roughly a month and a half into fatherhood. I’m locked in this job the rest of my life; no lunch breaks, no paid vacations, I can’t even get fired. It’s daunting, it’s challenging, it’s wonderful and it’s beautiful. Somewhere between treading water in another round of college classes and changing diapers hand over fist, I’ve searched for and occasionally found a quiet spec of time to contemplate what on earth happened and how it came so abruptly.

            Unfortunately for me, there is no reliable frame of reference to turn to in figuring out how to respond to this or how to properly handle it, like a fish figuring out how to climb a tree. There’s nothing in my experience that comes close to this. I can’t even begin to guess when coming home to see Lucas there will become “normal,” let alone the day he starts talking or uses the toilet. Witnessing his birth was so shocking I sobbed like I had never sobbed before. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t ecstatic, I was … surprised? I had a full brain reboot in the delivery room for apparently no reason. It was helpful only in that I eventually stopped crying.


            I still had to walk around the bed to see him and love him and be his father for the rest of his life. When I made it around the nurses to see his face close up I was stopped dead in awe, for lack of a better word. I didn’t dare touch him for the longest time. What was never going to happen even a week before had come, and the transition to overwhelming, unconditional, all-encompassing love set in like I was always capable of it. 

            I saw so much of myself in him that first day in the hospital and I see more every day. At the same time I see equal parts Megan in his little face.  A miracle is the only way to describe the subtle hints of each of us that contributed to who he is. How does each cell know where it’s supposed to be? How does the body know how to come together and build little fingers and toes and ears and eyes? Having children is a divine, masterful miracle.



            Before I get too high-headed about this, I want to tell you that our family life is gloriously perfect and we‘ve had nothing but rainbows and butterflies and the heavens opening over at the Rudd home, but I can’t. It isn’t. We haven’t. The magic is fading and work, school and sleepless nights are creeping in. I’m still selfish, stressed, reluctant, impatient.  I love sleep and haven’t quite squared with letting go of my old life.

            Needless to say, I was not the best father figure the first night Lucas was still eye-popping awake at 3 a.m. I was angry, really genuinely mad at a boy less than two weeks old. He couldn’t control his bowels, let alone his sleeping habits. What was I thinking? I handed him to Megan, every bit as wiped out as I was, and threw myself onto the bed while she fed him. He still wasn’t sleeping when she was done; she handed him back. Summoning the courage to not lose my mind over lost sleep, I took him again and tried to rock him against my chest, no good. In a last ditch effort I got back in bed, Lucas still on my chest, and rubbed his tiny back. He was asleep in less than a minute. The calm that came over him was tangible compared to the fussiness of just a few moments before.

            Instantly my irritation over lost sleep evaporated. He fell asleep on my chest. I got him to sleep. The joy of that moment, not just to get to go to sleep, but to feel like Lucas was beginning to know and love me, will sound corny if I try to describe any more. I almost had whiplash from the mood swing; the guilt of ever having been mad on the one hand and the greatest happiness of having a son on the other. I was being hugged and slapped at the same time.


            While I stared at the ceiling, baby asleep on my chest, a thought came back to mind that I had often chewed on waiting for him to arrive. When we found out we were expecting, my first thought was blinding fear, mostly of the financial unknown. It moved to other topics as the months wore on, but always it was fear. Sometimes the fear came with the arrogant selfishness of “why do I need to completely give up my life for this kid? I love the married couple life and I hate the thought of losing it.”

            The unfailing response to that was the thought of my own parents. They had already given up the easy life for me. They already made the decision to have children over personal comforts or a heathy savings account, and through struggles I’m sure they haven’t yet begun to tell me, gave me my very life. If they who were so selfless and full of love for me before I ever arrived could do that, and willingly, how did I even have the right to deny to another what had been so freely and fully given me?

            Returning to the moment made me almost reverent, looking into Lucas’s sleeping face. What if he had never happened? What if I never married his mother? What if he was born in India or in 1950 or, God forbid, aborted? The thought felt like salt on raw skin.

            Lucas has grown too much in the last month and a half; he wiggles constantly and smiles at his mom and dad all the time. He falls asleep like a wet bag of cement and eats like a horse. But the changes in his little life are miniscule compared to what he’s done to his dad. He’s getting bigger, but I’m getting better.

            I think about him all the time during that day and he’s literally kept me up all night, which sounds a lot like a new song on the radio. Pentatonix wrote an original song called “Can’t Sleep Love,” which if you haven’t heard you need to listen to here. It’s the kind of love that you “dream about all day, the kind that keeps [you] up all night.” Even if it costs sleep and maybe a little sanity too, it’s the only kind of love really worth having. Having children is the real “can’t sleep love,” heart-wrenching, life changing, all-absorbing love. I’m sure he’ll be keeping me up tonight, and I almost look forward to it.