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“Well, who wouldn’t want to be held while falling asleep and in the same arms when waking?” I wondered to myself as I held my niece on my lap. We sat in front of the large window that pours light into our kitchen, although it only shows a flimsy gate upon which ferns and cardinals flock and the small brick duplex that our neighbors inhabit. We had just shared a blueberry/blackberry/banana/strawberry smoothie, and she was contently dozing on my lap. By now, I know how she needs to be put to sleep. I know how she needs to feel you there until she is deeply asleep. How she reaches for your warmth and wakes up immediately if she does not sense it. How she fusses, even cries, when she wakes alone in a room where you are not.
I remember.
My father and I used to share a room in my grandmother’s house when I was a little girl. He was single, and would sometimes make sure I was off to sleep before going out with friends or “lady friends” at night. I vividly recall waking up one night to an empty bed. I panicked. I began to page him immediately from the landline. I imagined all sorts of terrible things that could have snatched my daddy from me in the night. There was no telling what it might have been in such pitch blackness that likes to fall in rural Southeast Tennessee. I was terrified. I must have paged him twenty times, at least.
Finally, he called back. But, he sounded happy. There was even a laugh in his throat. Beyond baffled, I was enfuriated. There I sat in the bed, sweating from fear and anxiety because anything could have happened to him. And he was laughing. Hadn’t he known that I would be horrified to wake up alone with no inkling of where he might be? Not even a note on the pillow to let me know that he had thought of me before he traipsed into the night. I quickly stuffed my emotions into a tight-lipped farewell, and threw my body into the mattress. For all my sadness and loneliness, I could not manage to ask him to come back. I could not plead because I never learned to do so. All I could do was be alone and miserable.
Who, really, wants to wake up alone when you’ve gone to sleep in the comfort of certain arms? Is there any soul who does not suffer fright upon stretching in the sunlight and feeling only the billow of sheets? Not I.
I am weak, but I will never confess it. Not to you, who may one day leave. Whether you leave from whim or Divine Will, my acceptance will not come quickly. It is as slow as my will is strong.
Tonight, I”ll babysit my niece and when her mother comes in to get her, I will hold her, as usual, as insist that she be left with me for the night. And in the morning, we will wake up together. Happily in one another’s arms.
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