In My Father's Arms

The wild and capricious cries of an infant subside to the low drone of the fan, the rhythmic creaking of the chair, and the groaning floor. It's an old floor--an old rocking chair too. I wonder if other fathers have rocked their sons to sleep, rocking away in some other place, some other time.

He is wrapped tightly in a white sleeper. I can see his left ear, the ear that came out folded over against itself. His fine, dark hair is coming in from the bottom and the back, like an old man. I can see one rosy cheek too, and a shuttered eyelid.

The squirming legs and arms are still now, conforming to the ark of my arms and belly. His forehead unfurrows. Now and again I can see his cheek suck in his passifier, in quick spurts of three or four. The panic of his face has been replaced with peacefulness. He trusts me.

I surprise myself with all the affection I have for this little person: for this splotch of hair, folded ear, pimply cheek.

Earlier the light pooled in from the hallway lamp. We were alone in that island of light, sitting up together as the world slept around us. Now the cool, bright light of morning falls on the hallway floor, trickling through the bathroom window. It skips a board where the window sash bisects the light. It fills half the black cracks between the boards, and the dusty hole in the floor.

The light tiptoes through the curtain behind me, and bathes the walls. I see his arms, they are around me too.

My buttocks talks to me, tells me I've been sitting on this wooden seat long enough. When I let my head droop, my eyelids close for a moment. I get up and put my son down, sound asleep. It's my turn to rest in his arms.