It is late, and K is trying to get the Boy to sleep. He tosses and moans, turns and groans, rolls over — his newest trick — and seems reluctant to cooperate.
“If I feed him one more time,” she asks, “will you be able to hold him?”I stop grading papers.
“Of course,” I say.
Soon after, I’m making laps, walking a now-well-worn path through our living room, past our front door, through our kitchen, past the carport door, and looping back into living room. Repeat.
The Boy’s head rests on my shoulder. His arms dangle to the side. When the Boy was a newborn, K or I walked this lap every night, every morning. Eleven PM. One AM. Sometimes three AM. Five AM. Still shuttered in sleep, our consciousness had difficulty doing little more than counting the steps in the hopes that we could ultimately transform the exercise into a variant of sleepwalking. It has grown easier though he has grown heavier: the body grows accustomed to less sleep with time.
Now, all nineteen pounds rest in the crook of my left arm while my right hand holds an iPod into which I whisper this evening’s post. These solitary laps in near-darkness with a sleeping child on my shoulder lead to contemplation unlike anything else I know.
The floor creaks at a certain point and as the summer as progressed, the area which creeks seems to have expanded deeper and deeper into the living room. Every night when I make my rounds, I think to myself, “I need to look on the internet how to fix a creaking floor,” but I’m afraid the job will require more work and time than I am able to devote to it now. And so I simply keep walking, listening to the creak grow quieter, counting the steps it takes to reach silence, wondering if I’ll ever be able to fix it, doubting that the time will ever come. It’s just one of the countless projects that hangs over my head like Damacles’ sword. I know I must get there are some point. I know that while I’m building up the life of my son, I’m allowing other parts of life deteriorate. But it’s easier to fix a squeaking floor that has overtaken the entire downstairs area.
On the kitchen side of the round, where the floor doesn’t squeak and squak, E’s shallow, slow breathing marks a counterpoint to the padding of my feet. Perhaps we are establishing a rhythm between us, the rhythm of all fathers and sons: never quite in synch but like counterpoint, ultimately complementary.
