Happy Birthday, 2013...!

Dear Nick, I'm not an articulate man anymore. I used to be, I think. Maybe I will be again someday. I don't feel like I am at this moment. Eight years ago, at 7:45 in the evening, you were presented to me like a tightly wrapped little loaf of bread, seven pounds, five ounces. Not bad for a little kid with a heart defect and Down syndrome. You hair was long and stringy and ginger colored. You were so late in coming your hair looked like it was chemically burned from soaking in wombjuice. Your little eyes were wide open and astonishingly blue and we just gazed at each, expressionless, for what certainly was only a minute or two but which felt much longer. Looking back now, I can still remember the look on your face. It was indifferent. It was a look that said, "What are you gonna do for me?" Well, that was the question. As for the answer to that question, it's: I don't know. I love you, Nick. You've taught me more in our short time together than I learned in my entire life up to your birth. You've taught me about courage, and love, dedication, and sacrifice. Pride, shame, hope, despair, frustration, forgiveness, freedom, guilt. I haven't slept a single night in peace in over eight years. My hair's going gray. I'm stooped and tired from hoisting you all the time. I've developed a stutter from biting back shouts of angry curses. My life feels like a jail cell and I'm too much of a coward or an idiot to do anything about it. I dread waking up in the morning. My toils are Sisyphean and my loneliness is glacial. What have I done for you. Is that a question, or by its construction does it present its own answer. For the first two years or your life I never left your side. I read to you constantly. Books, newspapers. I strolled you around everywhere. I massaged your palate, drove you to therapy, fed you, helped you learn to turn over, to crawl, to sit up, to go from prone to sitting. I fed you late at night so that your little body would start to thrive. Unwrapping you for your feeding, I was always greeted by a little puff of warm Nickyair, like the smell of fresh bread. How uninterested you were regarding the bottle. I would jiggle the nipple in your mouth, stroke your cheek, scrape your soles, press a wash cloth to your face to wake you so that you would eat. There's more and more. Eight years later, you're a good boy, a sweet kid, that acts like a real jerk sometimes. You can be swooningly loving, grindingly annoying, and infarction-inducing infuriating. But you try hard and want to please and the world is not a kind place to kids like you and I want to protect you but I don't know how, so I just try to do my best. I just try and fail and try and fail. Who knows if I'm doing anything right? Love, Dad

Thumbs up...

Dear Nicky, Have I mentioned that you're now going to school at ECLC? My little bird has left the nest! It's taken you a little while to get used to the new structure and routines, but you do okay most of the time. They have a method for communicating whether you've had a good behavior day or a bad behavior day. Sometimes you get a report with a thumbs up, sometimes you get a report with a thumbs down. When you get a thumbs up report, it gets taped to the wall of honor in the kitchen. When you don't, you're not allowed to play Wii. Powerful motivators both! Love, Dad

Patched...!

Dear Nicky, This afternoon when you returned home, I resolved to start patching your right eye again in order to strengthen the left one. We haven't done this in a long time, but when we used to, you tolerated it rather well, but then our resolve weakened and we told ourselves that you wouldn't allow it anymore. And again today, you had no interest at all, and I didn't want to upset you, but this needed to be done. So I sat with you, and talked, and joked, and bargained, until you finally agreed. You wore it steadily for over an hour, and I praised you heartily when the time was up. When Mom came home, she praised you, too. I felt pretty good as well. Love, Dad

New Year, new chance...

Dear Nick, I haven't written in so long, and I'm sorry. I got some bad advice. I haven't been myself, haven't been thinking clearly, for quite some time. I've made a lot of mistakes, and I cringe or kick myself when I review them, which is often. I haven't forgotten that you're one of the best gifts I've ever gotten in this life, but I have allowed that knowledge to be buried in the mud of the everyday monotony, the drudgery of the daily toil, frankly. You're greater in your personhood than I am in mine. I thought I was here to teach you, but I think you teach me far more. You're a wonder and I love you. That's all I need to focus on. Love, Dad

My little one, alone in the world...

Dear Nick, I've got to do better for you. I must try and be a better father. I must be more patient. This is my confession. I get so angry sometimes. I forget your challenges and get frustrated with an apparent lack of effort. Or I magnify your challenges into an insurmountable colossus where any effort is futile. You're not trying to be difficult, I know this. You can't help it. I try to be good, but when I fail, I can't help it either. All I can do is start again, and forgive myself and forgive you, and hope that you forgive me too. Love, Dad

It was "Yellow Submarine"...

"I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me." My darling Nicky, I feel guilt and self-loathing for having abandoned this blog. I'm ashamed to admit it makes me feel like I've abandoned you, and my attitude toward you lately is disgraceful. For a while now, your behavior has been challenging. I often run out of patience and snap or get really angry. I forget that you don't do things on purpose to be frustrating. I live in fear that my heart will grow harder and harder. Earlier today we had a lot of laughs wrestling in bed--you, me, and June, and tonight you specifically asked me to lay in your bed, something that hasn't happened in a long time. I complied, and after I sang you the Goodnight Nicky song, I asked if you wanted to hear "Yellow Submarine," a song I've sung to both my children since their infancy. So many memories came back, so many tender feelings, such depth of love... I haven't been doing my best consistently. I'm going to try and do better. The greatest lesson I learned from my mother's death is that parents fail more than they succeed but that doesn't mean they love their children any less. Even more important, the only things you have control over in life is forgiving the people most important to you, and forgiving yourself. Since you are the soul of forgiveness, I'll try to really earn it. Thank you for being in my life. Love, Dad

Happy Birthday, 2012...!

My darling Nick,

You take karate, you're learning to swim. You can write your name and no other kid at your school can. You're a squishy delicious cuddle-bunny, a human Teddy bear, a brave, contrary, smart, exasperating, funny, frustrating, beautiful, loving, stubborn, gorgeous human being. You're my son, my firstborn, my only boy. You came into my arms seven years ago tonight. Seven years have gone by in the blink of an eye. We looked each other in the eye that night, right in the eye and only seconds old!, and so many times since then. We still find each other in the night sometimes, and I wrap myself around you and you bury your face in my neck, and I become drunk with a love that words cannot do justice. I feel like I've aged 21 years, while you've aged a little over two. It hasn't been easy, kid, God knows if he exists--but am I a richer man for having you in my life, am I a better person? There is no doubt. The day of your birth has been an ongoing gift to me.

Love,
Dad