...29(in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:

20.March.2019

It is 3:47 as I sit now to write.

3:47 on Wednesday afternoon.

3:47 on the first day of spring.

The sun is bright, streaming through the windows. It's hit the crystal at just the right angle so rainbows dance up the walls and across the floor and ceiling.

Outside, if I listen carefully, I can hear the chirrup of birds at the feeder. Water-cooler chatter, no doubt.

Here in the house, though, it is silent. Remarkably so.

A towel bundled into the crack where the door and floor meet, dulls the sound of the outside world. The phones are on mute. I've unplugged the refrigerator to silence its whirr and whine.

It is silent, and my boy is asleep.

Napping.

He had...a day... A hard day.

No particular reason.

No particular cause.

A hundred reasons and a thousand causes.

But nothing that one could simply pinpoint and say "alright, let's remove that...let's prevent that". He was, simply, overwhelmed.

There was a quiz grade posted. He took it personally. Not in the "offended" way, but in the personal way of "I am the failure that the grade represents". (The grade was not a failing one...not to you and I...but it wasn't an A, and therefore to him it was failure with a big red F...branded on his forehead.). So he came home. Defeated. Overwhelmed. Self-loathing.

We made it up the driveway, his hand limp and hot in mine. We made it into the house and through the routine of after-school. We even made it through the conversation...the one where I remind him that "grades don't matter. effort matters. mistakes are how we learn."

And then I told him to take a nap. I bundled him up and turned off the refrigerator and muted the phones and blocked the door.

He protested. Nervous about homework. Stressed about the time.

I held firm.

Smoothed back the hair from his forehead. Gave him a kiss on the cheek and walked away.

5 minutes later I snuck back in and he was asleep.

Soon enough, I'll have to wake him. Soon enough, he'll be back at the table and hunched over homework. Soon enough he'll be holding himself to impossibly high standards. Soon enough he'll be listening to some inner voice that tells him he isn't good enough.

But for right now...

He's asleep.

And I can dream that he believes that he is the perfection I know him to be...