I sing him to sleep

This is the irrational season, where love blooms bright and wild.

That’s Madeleine L’Engle, about Christmas. We’re in November now. I’ve lived a lifetime in a hospital, a lifetime where the seasons changed, we bought jeans at Target because we hadn’t come prepared for fall. A lifetime where we learned to lean hard on each other – I’ll prep the suction, you hold his trach – a lifetime of doing this while kissing Jack’s head and telling him funny stories, making faces, laughing the dark away. A lifetime of backpacks and diaperbags we can’t quite tell apart, of writing philosophy in the dark, reading Til We Have Faces and For the Life of the World while our son sleeps, swaddled tight, a smile flickering across his face as he dreams.

This is the irrational season.

—

When my nephew was born two years ago, I went out to visit him around two months. While my sister took a shower and did some things around the house, I held him. He fussed, as babies do; I did the only thing I could think. I put on Norah Jones and I sang him while I swayed around their kitchen.

When I was a senior in college I swayed a baby around the hotel room singing “Winter Song” by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson on repeat for 182 times, according to my computer. Her mom was speaking at the conference, and I was babysitting; she fell asleep after play 68, but I listened on. It was the first time I imagined my own someday dance – the living room, the late night, the baby that would belong to me, I to him or her.

And the Sundays after college when I was searching for myself, I returned to be with the littlest ones, scooping them up as I sang the old hymns, stepping between toys, between other children. I sang the words that were my ropes, my anchors on the water. I swayed and sang a year of Sundays.

—

When I was pregnant with Jack, there were days that I thought the world had left me behind. I used to say that something in me died, that my expectations died, those long 20 weeks after his diagnosis. What could be the same? I remembered singing Sara and Ingrid and I remembered singing Norah and I remembered the old hymns and I once walked a mile along the river weeping because it seemed I would never be the mother I imagined myself to be.

I was wrong. A fallow field has not died. It is only being emptied for the fullness that is coming. It is being made ready. And my heart is a field God laid fallow – for there was not enough room in me for my expectations and my son. There would not be enough room for the kind of love I prayed to give him.

In the irrational season, God makes the fields fallow. God widens the spaces where love must enter. I never stopped believing that God was good. But only now do I see my way to believing that God’s goodness extends to this work – to widen my heart for the wonder that is my son.

—

Jack loves when I sing Norah Jones. He looks up at me, grabs at my hair, falls asleep and nestles deep in my arms. I sing him the old hymns, “This is my Father’s World,” and “Alleluia, Sing to Jesus,” I sing him the stories, the songs of meeting his dad and driving through early mornings along route 97. I sing Sara and Ingrid. I sing, my voice catching in my throat. The joy sears along my vocal chords, stitching into me the words, the look on my son’s face, the singing.

—

I tell God that there is so much I wanted to give Jack that I can’t.

God smiles. Nothing was lost that Jack was always meant to have.

I tell God that there is so much I thought would be different than it is.

God smiles. Your heart is wide enough now.

I tell God this is the irrational season.

God smiles. Love is blooming, deep and wild.

—

If you are looking for me, I am singing my son to sleep.

Love,
hilary