it’s dangerous to think after midnight

Some days I’m convinced that I’m crazy.

It’s my own particular brand.

I’m hoping we’ve all got our own signature varieties of crazy.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

To make me feel less crazy.

Last night after bedtime I heard Otto calling my name.

“Momma!”

He was standing by our bedroom door.

“I just want to sleep in anyone else’s bed,” he whispered in his raspy nighttime voice, his fingers clutching his dirty blanket.

“How about Momma and Daddy’s bed?” I asked.

He grinned, surprised at the unusual ease of that exchange, and scooted right up into the center of our giant sagging bed, closed his eyes and fell asleep – all about that quickly.

When Kevin and I headed to bed later, there he was – center stage. One arm above his head. Cheeks red from warmth. Two stuffed lions tucked in beside him for comfort.

And so we did what parents sometimes do with last babies who are not even slightly babies any longer.

We stared at him. We giggled quietly when he made silly sleep noises. We kissed his warm cheeks.

And we talked about him.

And I cried.

Because that’s part of my brand of crazy now.

I think too much.

And then I cry.

Maybe it’s the writer in me. The observer. The collector of details. The thinker of thoughts.

More crazy.

Maybe it’s the nearing-forty and seeing those numbers tick by.

But I just couldn’t stop thinking about Grown Up Otto.

The man he will become. Lord willing.

A man who will one day be lying in bed with his own wife. A man who will probably have zero recollection of ever actually being three years old.

And when I’m thinking too much, when I’m settled heavy down into my style of crazy, I can barely stand the thoughts.

I can hardly breathe under the hefty weight of reality. The terrible inevitability of the passage of time.

That my Otto Fox Wilder will forget this very evening is sometimes too much to bear.

But I will not forget.

And I must, I absolutely must, believe that although he will not recall sleeping beside his daddy at three, he will remember being loved. Feeling treasured. Growing up important in his family.

I have to think this.

It seems the only balm for my tender heart that has spent too many of the wee hours contemplating a future I cannot control.