Momentary

Oh mercy, mercy. Where in the world to begin? How about ten minutes ago - sitting near the bathtub next to my son. Anna asked if I would like to give him a bath, or whether she should do it. My turn. I'll take this one.

I sit next to him, but I'm not really there. Thinking, thinking ... letting my mind slip beyond and before this scene in my life, a life that is only made up of moments. I mindlessly lather my hands with Dr. Bronner's castile soap, as though I had been brainwashed by the mantras canvasing the bottle. Wyatt wrestles the blue balloon and old rubber basketball he has carried with him like dolls to the tub. He places the balloon in between the faucet and two handles that distribute hot and cold. I am impressed, but weary. He has to raise himself onto his knees to reach that high, and there's the chance he could slip, bang his head upon metal protrusions. Floating in my precautionary mind is always the risk, the horrible images of what should never be. So, I watch, and prepare my arms for action: the forever tension.

For Wyatt, the world is magical, and he expects me to carry the pixy dust that makes it dance. I have a few tricks - play a song and dance to its tune, spin a ball. I have a new, remote controlled helicopter that fascinates him for a few minutes. I tried all of these today, but all I wanted to do was watch football. So I tried to convince Wyatt that watching football too is spectacular - using that amazing stock of wonder my son has in me from some deep, mythological place.

I positioned his potato-sack body on top of my lap, lounging in the newest retro chair. At first he loved it, watching the ball appear and disappear between twenty-two hulking men broadcast through air from sunny places to my cold house. But his attention waned after he tasted what it was like to be me in this regard, and I was ushered out of lethargy into attentiveness - doing my best to communicate and engage.

I parent with wild gestures and games of primeval motions: tag, spinning, wrestling, burying my nose into the slivers of exposed neck. It works him up; our shared frustration from a world too confined by winter. We want to get out and run. But, we can't, so I return to the football game and let myself become dull...

My son does no such thing. Wyatt has this new expression when he sees something dramatic. His eyebrows arch upward as his chin descends with delight, and his mouth forms that perfect "o" you saw Charles Shulz draw upon Lucy as she sings a carol for A Charlie Brown Christmas. Expectant, surprised, elated: it is the face of wonder, and he compliments it at other times by passing a "whoa" from his tiny soul beyond his lips. Actually, I think his soul is the larger between he and I.

"Wyatt, do you want to stay in the bath for two more minutes, or do you want me to get you out right now?" I speak the question Anna taught me six months ago from a book about parenting with love and logic. It's a way for Wyatt to feel like he has some control over this decision. I know it’s healthy, but I also know I will get him out in a thirty seconds, hoping he can’t tell time yet.

He will fall asleep before me tonight. He is exhausted from the living, the discovery. I, however, have lived the wonder already. My mind turns then in these closing hours to the piecing of reality, the planning for tomorrow. I return to managing the mystery and becoming less of what I need to be while my child rests with a mind that knows no planning or limits.

Another day. A new year. The same pacing of minutes, the matter of duty and joy and survival that I never knew before I had a child. I never knew the steady exhaustion that is parenting - the emptying of oneself to entertain and educate. Now I know: how my child has more discovery than I have answers, how my son has more eagerness for life than I have discipline to curtail or knowledge to teach. Anna knows better, feels it more acutely. I only think I know the way a child begins to depend on you, need you. I have not nourished a child with my own energy and life and blood. I have not housed this home day in and day out for over a year. She has, though, and now she carries another child in her womb. More dependency, more discovery: the wonderful mix of giving and getting life.

Wes