Black Keys Melody

            Hello Little Beautiful. Welcome Home. About two weeks ago, you crept back down the stairs an hour after I had tucked you in. I was sitting in my Adirondack rocker out on the back porch, and you crawled right up into my lap. You just pushed in under my little blanket and curled up around my cup of tea as if it were the most natural thing. I think you didn’t want me to send you back to bed, so you were completely quiet and just watched the night with me. You’re infected with Nyctophilia now. That’s probably my fault.         Now, when it gets close to bedtime, you fill the conversation with comments about dusk. Where you used to riddle me with questions about where the sun retired to, how it got its gold back after it dropped it all into the lake, and if dropping its gold made the sun, in fact, an autumn-time tree; you, now, fill the dusk with comments and questions about the rising purple, the appearing stars, and the relationship between fireflies and shadows. I

               Hello, Little Beautiful. Welcome home. This morning, you crawled into my bed and snuggled right up to me. Usually, I would have been pleasantly woken up, but this morning you were hot and sweaty—feverish, though you don’t really understand that concept yet. You wouldn’t tell me how you were feeling or answer any questions; you merely wanted to be covered up in bed with me. So that’s what we did until the sun rose and your fever finally broke. Once your temperature lowered, I gave you a cold bath and dressed you in clean clothes. You ate a little for me, but now you’re asleep on my lap. Your breathing is a lot easier than it was this morning. I can feel your heart against my chest, our inhales and exhales in sync. I wonder what it was like for you, waking up, not knowing what a fever was but knowing something was wrong. I am realizing that even then, with no true concept of the danger, you were afraid; and aware of that fear, you came to me. I couldn’t fix it, b

           Hello, Little Beautiful.           Welcome Home.           This morning the world was so quiet and warm. When I slipped into your bedroom, I tried to be as silent as I could. You were a mess, your hair all tossed and your face all wrinkled up in the sheets. I laid down next to you as gently as I could, wrapping my arm over you just as lightly. Your breathing was so deep and you were so warm, I almost fell asleep right there beside you, even with my socked feet hanging off your bed.           But the best part of my morning was brushing my fingertips so carefully across your face. You took your first intentional breath of the day, and I got to see it. Then you opened those beautiful doe eyes of yours. You smiled at me.           Today, it’s a toothy grin full of both baby and big-kid teeth, but its the grin I love most in the world.             We ate breakfast together, watching your favorite cartoon. Afterward, you told me you wanted to choose your own clothes and