Today's barometer is that we're all sick again. Last night I took Nyquil to quiet the raging sinus pressure and pain and had a restless sleep. Henry suffered the worst, coughing most of the night, tossing, turning and at one point calling out for..Daddy.
The kids don't call Jacob Daddy, they call him Jake.
The hardest parts of life are not my own, they are the children's, too young to fully understand life as it is now, their dreams bring back their memories in full bloom, as if they could reach out and touch in their sleep what no longer exists in their waking hours. Henry is no exception. On nights when he couldn't sleep Cole would rub his back and sing Harry Chapin to him, Cats in the Cradle, sort of an inevitable confession because Cole knew he worked too damned much and he felt guilty constantly but he never changed. I hate that song. Hate it.
Last night Henry asked Jacob to sing him to sleep and rub his back like daddy used to do when he had time. And Jacob couldn't dare bring himself to sing that fucking song and yet he wasn't about to refuse Henry any request for comfort that he could ever ask of Jake. And so Jake settled blissfully on a song that Henry now calls Jacob's lullaby, even though Henry is well aware that it rests on one of Mommy's favorite CDs of all time, the final track of U2's Unforgettable Fire, and he's heard it a million times before, but never a cappella, in Jacob's baritone, at three o'clock in the morning in the dark, which lent it a haunting simplicity that left me with no words at all.
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him
