Listening Post

I've shared quite a bit around here over the past few years -- made some of my most personal traumas and tragedies a matter of public record. But I can't help but wonder if I should even bother trying to relate what I'm feeling right now.

Inara's sleeping soundly at the foot of the bed as I sit here and quietly type these words. I can hear her soft, rhythmic breathing and, especially combined with the whisper of the rain coming down outside the window of the Ft. Lauderdale condo I call home most of the time these days, it's the most perfect sound imaginable. Or at least it would be if it weren't for the fact that, once again, I have to accept that this is the last time I'll be lucky enough to experience this for a while. That's because tomorrow morning, once again, I'll board a plane with my child and fly her back to New York and back to her mother -- the latest revolution in the cycle of surreal heartbreak that's become my relationship with the family that I was once allowed to cherish every minute of every day. The last time Inara was with me for an extended period of time and I was forced to then face the reality of giving her up, I was overwhelmed with despair at what I assumed was the pain and emptiness to come. This time's worse. This time I don't have to assume. I already know what it will feel like. Being separated from my child is a sadness and grief that I wouldn't wish on another living human being.

For the past two weeks, I've been there at the side of her crib as she falls asleep at night and when she wakes in the morning. Being the first thing she sees in the morning -- watching her face light up when she looks up and finds me there -- it's like warm sunshine against my soul. She doesn't understand the events that broke up her parents, nor the ongoing circumstances that keep her father separated from her much of the time, she only knows that I'm there waiting for her when she opens her eyes at the beginning of a new day. And I have to believe that she knows she's loved completely.

Before she arrived here, I admit that for the sake of self-preservation I had tried to build a wall -- to tell myself that I'd spend a couple of wonderful weeks with my daughter then take her back up north and life would go on as usual. It would go back to "normal." It took all of 24-hours alone with her for me to realize that I was lying to myself in terms so absolute as to be almost laughable. I wanted to protect myself because I didn't want to be devastated when she left, but there's no protection from this -- and I'm going to be devastated. Again. And it's going to repeat -- over and over like some real-life Sisyphean tragedy: bliss and anguish, bliss and anguish, bliss and anguish. All because no matter what happens in my life -- where I end up, what I end up doing -- I won't be there for every single minute of my child's young life. And that's all I want. It's the simplest thing in the world to long for -- and the most complicated.

So I accept that I'll be without her again. That she won't wake up to me in the morning and let me rock her to sleep at night and pick her up by her feet and swing her around and give her a bath and tickle her until she's laughing so hard she's almost crying. Eventually I'll get the chance to pretend again -- to spend a few weeks living my life as if she's with me all the time. And I have to accept that those moments may not last forever but that they'll make the excruciating emptiness in between worth it.

I have no choice. Not right now.

Each night when I put Inara to bed, I sing to her -- a song by Mark Kozelek that's been featured on Nickelodeon's Yo Gabba Gabba. The song really does break my heart, and so does the little animated video the show made for it -- because it reminds me of the wondrous, joyful moment I wanted to be there for every single night of my little girl's childhood. Like I said, I used to think that tucking her in as she goes to sleep would be the simplest of pleasures -- in some ways the most modest thing I'd ever asked for in life. I know now that it's anything but that. It's a luxury that's beyond value.

I have no doubt that this song will make me cry uncontrollably once Inara's gone. But it will always be our song to me.

Here's Bedtime Lullaby.



(Incidentally, the picture above is recent but not from the past couple of weeks. I took a lot of new photos but haven't uploaded them from my camera yet. They'll be coming soon.)