Night Tears

By day, I am not aware of feeling sad. I am too busy to have time to think much about how I’m feeling.

Maybe that’s why, for the third time this month, I have awakened, crying in my sleep.

Here’s what I know:

The dream that made me cry, like the other two, was about E., except in this one he was a little boy, not an infant. And he must have been sad. Why else would my breaking heart have woken me up?

As it happens, he is sad right now. He just acquired braces, a good two years after most of his peers, because years ago, when he should have been getting them, I allowed a dentist to convince me to wait. 

He is also sad because he has just learned that the horrendously painful surgery he underwent two months ago to implant screws to anchor the braces completely failed and must be redone.

So, not only is he distraught over beginning his orthodontic journey in his junior year of high school, when looking good matters more than just about anything (and dreading the prospect of it extending into college), but his mouth throbs. Plus, in a few weeks, he'll be post-op and swollen.

He was just beginning to emerge from the moody bog of the last two years. Once again, he greets me with a grunt. He is aching and he is angry.

If we do nothing else in this world, our job as parents is to protect our kids from harm and pain.

On the latter front, at least, I’ve let my boy down.

I've been trying to duck the guilt and the sadness, to skate over it, but in the end, it always catches up with me.