13. Summer's end

Soleia 1.85

The sun rose at 645 today.  You hadn’t slept long enough.  You had been set to bed late the night before.  We went to have breakfast and give Mama the morning to herself before she had to depart.

You dipped behind the clouds on the way home, dimming the daylight.  Like I said, you hadn’t slept enough and this time you would hide your light all the way to noon.

The ride to Nana and Grandpa’s was uneventful.  You ate Multi-grain Cheerios the whole way, making eyes at passengers and at your father for the entire journey.

You were dimming again as Grandpa picked us up from the RT station at McCowan.  It wouldn’t be long before you’d need another nap and I readied myself to the task of finding a relatively quiet room in the house were you might go under.

But once we settled into Nana and Grandpa’s bed in the darkened room, I could here the weezing and gasping that you made from beneath your pacifier on the bed beside me.  You couldn’t breath – your nose was stuffed.

I hadn’t brought the aspirator.  I was on the razor’s edge between trying to calm you down and resolving to do the dirty but necessary work of sucking snot from your nose.  I lay there next to you, feigning slumber, the weight of my arm heavy and comforting upon you I hoped and still you squirmed, searching for a comfort that eluded you.

A comfort elusive because you couldn’t breathe.

I took you with me downstairs; found a drinking straw.  I apologized to you the whole way downstairs and the whole way back up.

I laid you on the bed and put my weight on your legs and hips, trapping you in the most polite and unnoticeable way that I knew.  I apologized once your instincts kicked in – once you knew what I meant to do to you.  The tears ran quickly – the protests that you made with every muscle in your little body...

I restrained you as gently as I could and began to suck through the straw nestled in your nostril. Viscous white slime began to ooze up the straw partly sticking to its inner surface, saving me from the taste of your nasal excrement.  I sucked and sucked and you cried and cried – now you’re beet red in the face.

I pull off and move quickly to the bathroom to reverse the flow and blow the obstructing slime into the sink.  Then I rush back to you to do the other nostril…

But in my heart I know I’ve come up short.

I know that I’ve simply gone through the motions of doing the right thing.  I know I didn’t get it all.  I know that I didn’t get it all and suck you as empty of that snot as possible because I didn’t want to taste your snot in my mouth.

Which is as understandable as it is daft.  I’m afraid of your fluids now?  Weren’t you, once upon a time, simply a cell that was partly made up of a sperm that came out of my own body?

Did you find that process distasteful, having half of your existence pass out of the orifice through which I urinate?

I know that I’ve wasted time by doing half a thing rather than a whole thing.  I could have committed to having you skip your nap.  I could’ve committed to sucking your nose.  I’ve done neither and now you’re neither asleep nor awake – gasping for air next to me as we again try to sleep in vain.

I apologize again.  Lay you down again.  Brace myself against you again.

But this time – you don’t cry.  Not straightaway.

This time, the Sun wraps her arms around her father’s head, holding him still against her.

Was it a silent plea?  A desperate request for a reprieve?  Were you asking me to give you a moment more to steel yourself against it?

My heart aches.  It breaks. 

These are the only moments when I truly feel failure.  Those moments when I’ve failed you.

“I have to Jub-bee,” I whisper with resignation.  “This is me, being a good father.”

I try to push the weight of my head up.  Two little arms hold it pinned down, firm, desperate.

“I’m sorry my love,” I whisper, and you’ve caught me at a vulnerable moment.  My will will not waver – I know that much.  But here we were and I knew that we should enjoy this one moment – my head resting on my daughter, resting on the Sun, trapped in her fierce, warm little arms – here, at Summer’s end.  Feeling the rise of her chest – the life of her glowing and growing with each breath.

“I love you,” I say.  I bring the straw into view.  Your little face cracks into an anguished cry.  I hope I gave you enough time to prepare.

I suck the snot from your nostril until I can feel it on my tongue – the salty taste and slimy texture that I’ve tasted a million times or more already in my life.  Except, of course, that all that phlegm was mine.

But again, you used to be a sperm in my body.  So, in a real way, your phlegm is mine as well.

I spit and repeat and spit once more and hold you up and comfort you in the aftermath.  And I hold your teary little face against my ear…

…to find the air passing unimpeded.

I set you on the bed beside me and the tribulation and ordeal had drained what little reserves you had left.  Breathing softer and softer.  I can lift my arm away now – the Sun has dipped behind the clouds.  You are asleep.

Summer – like the Sun – is too fine a thing to go down without a fight.

-- Dada