Close the Door

My wife and I mostly alternate nights putting my son to bed. There’s a give and take there, because it’s a privilege to get to snuggle with him and sing him toward sleep. Riley and I have our routines of how I brush his teeth and how we hold onto one another in the soft yellow glow of a nightlight, all of which are intimate and unique to us, all of which are fleeting in the sense that I know, from the infinite cumulative changes of the last two years, that the folk wisdom is true: blink my eyes and he’ll be in school, blink my eyes again and he’ll be a teenager, and dare I blink three times and he’ll be moved out of the house altogether. These nights together are numbered.

But those nights I don’t put him to bed are a kindness, too, for the reprieve of getting late night work done uninterrupted--writing, submitting to literary journals, doing the dishes, grading papers. That time’s often my best shot at sustained reading for pleasure or watching a movie that doesn’t include Curious George.

Still, those nights that often feel like freedom come with their misgivings. I’ve been known to belabor my good night wishes like a teenager saying farewell to their boy or girlfriend before a night apart, when they won’t see them until the next day. I’ll want a hug and a kiss and to watch my son a little longer, and to play peekaboo with the door on my way out such that the last sound I’ll hear from him is his laughter, and that making him laugh will be his last memory of me for that night, and often bleeding over to the day that follows when I leave for work before he wakes.

But as my son has grown older, more active, more physically capable, he has become the one to end these interactions at least as often as I do. He walks to me in the doorway occasionally for a last hug or to try to pull me inside to join the party. But most often of all, he’ll close the door in my face.

There’s a lesson in that. That he neither intends nor causes any offense, but rather enjoys opening and closing doors when we let him. That my wife and I laugh at the bluntness of the goodbye. Not least of all that this is where we’re headed, so why not cut to the chase? What goodbye was ever easier for stretching it out? And, after all, we will see each other the next day.

He’s got it right, so young, so wise beyond his years.