This morning, I found this in one of those folders that should be renamed “rabbit hole” and given a date every so often, when I was looking for something I need at work. It’s a four-year-old picture of Alex hugging me, his arms tight enough around my neck to make the lights dim. That’s kind of his trademark hug, and has always been, and finding this photo made me think about Alex’s beautifully free, emotional expressiveness and how much I envy him for it sometimes.
When we marooned ourselves in the woods for a few days over Thanksgiving, sleeping quarters were tight, and Alex and I shared a twin bed for a couple of nights. One of those nights, he woke me up, put his arms around my neck, and told me that he’d had a bad dream. I did what you know parents do with those types of things in the middle of the night: I told him it was just a dream, everything’s fine, yadda yadda, gave him a little mini hug and started what I hoped would be a quick journey back to dreamland.
A minute or so later, he tightens his death squeeze of a hug and says, “I love you, Dad.” I step back from slumber momentarily to tell him I love him too, reciprocate his squeeze gently, and once again set myself in the direction of sleep.
Maybe another 15 seconds pass, and Alex’s grip on my neck tightens even further and I’m thinking “damn, dude, one of these days you’re actually going to make me pass out with these things, and maybe come to think of it that would be a good thing because don’t we both have to get some rest?” and just as I’m about to pry his hands off of my neck and roll over, he speaks up again.
“I’ll always love you, Dad,” he says, emphasis his, and doesn’t loosen his grip until, an hour of a 30-second stretch later, he’s asleep again.
In the morning, I find out his nightmare had been about being an adult and coming to my house for dinner, and knocking on the door but nobody answers, and then he comes in the house and it’s empty and I’m not there anymore and he realizes it’s because I’m gone as in dead, and in the dream he starts crying and falls on the floor at which point he wakes up, puts his arms around my neck to be sure I’m still there, and - in his recollection - falls straight back to sleep.
And so that was the day after Thanksgiving.