When putting to bed a 7-year-old, the giggles are sometimes inevitable. Just about anything can set them off. A giggling 7-year-old is usually a joy, but it bedtime there’s a touch of gray to it as well: the kid needs to go to sleep, but it’s so much fun just to lie there giggling together.
Tonight the word “nipple” the boy giggling and he couldn’t stop. “Such a funny word!”
I put my index finger to my lips to shush him.
“Daddy,” he said, “you’re trying to shush me but you still laughing.”
“I know,” I laughed.
In the end, I had to leave. I knew he would never get and I would never stop laughing if I didn’t.
There was an added tenderness to that moment from a passage I had read earlier in the evening in a book by Paul Auster. One of the characters is a man named Peter Stillman who’s father had literally locked him up in a dark room from the age of three so he would forget English and revert to the natural language of God.
Needless to say, it didn’t work.
The only thing the father’s cruelty accomplished was to create a scarred man who could barely speak.
No father would behave way. Depravity is possible but not to that degree. At least we tell ourselves that. Insanity is the only explanation for such horror.
It seemed to me then that I was not only having a sweet moment with my son but also giving him an extra helping to make up for other children’s horror. As if that would help.Â