Parenting in the Dark

I remember playing monster with my kids when they were little, lying under a blanket in the middle of the living room while they scampered lightly from couch to chair to couch. All I heard were anxious giggles and whispered commands.

“You jump on him!”

“No, you do it!”

Squealing when I so much as twitched, shouting when I rose up onto all fours, screaming with playful terror when I found their foot with my flailing hand and began to pull them under the darkness of the blanket, tickling, gnawing, growling. Escape. Retreat. Then I was still again, and they circled, laughing.

Eventually, when I was finished, I tossed off the blanket for fresh air, light, only to be met with groans of disappointment.

“No!” They cried in despair. “Just a little more? Please?”

What is it in a child that wants to face fear, to go right up to the edge of darkness and shout in courageous defiance?

What is it in a child that wants to be held close by their father?

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There are subtle sadnesses that lap up onto January’s shore, some of those sadnesses without a name, just long stretches of shimmering melancholy that reflect the slate winter sky. It’s the coldest of mornings, the darkest of evenings.

Into these gray days we go down through the woods, crawling carefully over the trees that have came down during Advent, settled during Christmas, and now lie there waiting for spring to begin the long work of incorporating them back into the soil. These trees are massive and I can’t believe we missed their collapse. Even in the middle of the night, it seems we should have heard the crashing of these grandfathers of the forest.

I wonder what this hillside was like when their seed took root 50 years ago, or 75. Or 100. Could you hear the cars on the other side of the river back then, or was that road yet to be built? Did these woods stretch all the way south to the Susquehanna?

And what was it about these particular trees that outlasted the other seedlings around them? The speed of their growth? Placement? Genetics?

We leave the fallen giants behind us and follow the deer paths that wind through the trees, all the way to the river. We see the thin skin of ice forming, the side pools frozen over, the columns of the long-gone bridge caked with frozen mist.

What is it about a cold day that draws me out into it? All I want to do, or all I think I want to do, is curl up on the sofa, and yet when I’m out in the cold, it awakens me to my life.

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The undergrowth is always filling in the gaps left by the fallen trees.

Having young adult children means laying down the life you thought you were creating for them and trusting the life they are creating for themselves. It’s not easy when you’ve raised them, fed them, encouraged them, clothed them, tried to offer advice . . . but there comes a time when the loss of control is complete, and the only option is to trust them, trust the process of the life they’re living (or make yourself literally crazy trying to control things out of your control).

It’s also realizing that the life I’ve lived is not necessarily the best or only way to live a life. Letting go. Watching them with curiosity and hope.

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One recent, dark morning I went in to wake up Leo and he lifted his blanket and said, “Will you cuddle me for a bit before I get up?” So I crawled in under the warm darkness of his blanket and we lay there looking out the window, looking out at the early morning sky just beginning to find its blue, a massive sycamore and oak that survived the storm still stretching 60 feet up into the sky, their limbs covered in snow.

Those trees will fall, too, someday. And Leo will grow older. And Maile and I will watch these six kids of ours go out into the world. I’m starting to catch the smallest glimpse of how this departing is a good thing.

Doesn’t make it easy, though.