Snugglebug

for L. Blue

Saturday night, your mom took your brother to a rock concert so you went with me to the poetry party and spent the night. When I woke up, it was Father’s Day. I snuck in your room, watched you sleep, and thought about cameras and waterfalls.

Climbing in your bed, I whispered Snugglebug, and—without waking—you draped your arm around my neck. I can’t believe there’s such a thing as you, you with your tiny arms. I can’t believe you’re seven. I can’t believe we live between the sky and the grass in this world so full of gods.

*

When you were a much tinier girl, your mom would leave for work on Saturdays with her hands full of bags and clipboards and lunch and things so she couldn’t keep the door from SLAMMING behind her. Moments later, I heard the rain of your bare feet running down the hall. You climbed in bed with me, cuddled and clung to me, and whispered Snugglebug. I acted like I was asleep so I could hear the pace of your breathing slow, so I could feel the tension in your clinging drift away.

*

On Father’s Day, I listened to you breathe and wondered about sleep. Where were you? In what dream did you find yourself? Were you a mermaid? A bird? Running, afraid, through a maze of corridors with no solution? I imagined you and I in the backseat of some future car. Your husband is driving and your 19-year-old daughter is in the passenger seat. It’s late, perhaps we are returning from some somber event, and you lean into me, grab my arm, and put your head on my shoulder. I am old and tired but not without a little future left in me. I kiss your head, whisper Snugglebug, and your shoulders relax.

This is the way my memory and imagination mingled with your dreams on Father’s Day.

Comments

Now I'm pissed that I spent most of Father's Day rooting around dumpsters.

beautiful.

love this, as always.

I feel this way every day....."I can’t believe there’s such a thing as you, you with your tiny arms. "...

....although....it usually happens either right before or right after I consider putting my child up for sale on eBay...but I feel that way...ever day. I like the concept of raining bare feet down a hall....a much better way to think about the morning stampede that happens at 6:08am on any given morning.

Happy belated Father's Day...you seem (at least in written prose) to be one of the good ones!

Perfect. When it's about her it always is.

Lovely.

Complete gorgeousness.

*sniffle*

Her exsistance, your love for her, your words...perfection.

beautifully written. they made my heart melt and now i only wish to have moments like those with my babies.

I love your love for your babies.

it was the someday that destroyed me. the them, here now, with their little arms, i almost believe. that i could blink and find them gone or grown, justlikethat, i believe. but that there could be a forty years from now in the back of a car where the silly love words of these silly days connected us still? oh jesus. you may have just given me a kind of hope i never imagined.

Oh my god. You are a hero, in an internet of idiots.

I've typed and backspaced repeatedly - I just don't have the words. I simply loved this, that's all...

I am so lucky to have my kid. Those little arms and the cuddles. Doing my best to live a long time.

Fantastico.

I hope I marry a man who loves his kids as much as you do! If you know one, send him my way ;)

You've captured the beauty and fragility of this moment, as well as the beauty of fragility of parenthood. Stellar.

Beautiful, as always

All teared up over here. Your writing still amazes me.

The way you string together words and the alchemy of that and how it can make me cry is a gift. Keep falling forward.

Holy crap! That is amazingly beautiful. I think I'm in love!!!!! ;)

Oh my goodness. Heard about you on ohdeedoh, read this post, and....I'm in tears. What a lovely way to see your daughter. What a lovely way to write! Thanks for doing what I wish I could do. I'll be sure to follow you for quite some time, and I'm looking forward to it.

Simply put, this is great.