cry it out

They say we're supposed to let you cry sometimes, that it'll help you develop. It's a counter-intuitive move that still has a certain logic, despite the fact that doctors say it. I picture a Ferber box or Freud administering liquid cocaine to cranky newborns. But I still -- almost -- get it.

And enough people that I trust as parents have said it makes sense. Yet I've clung reticent, even though I buy it to a degree, even though the lack of sleep from running to your side in the middle of the night has primarily impacted your mother.

The other night we were in a strange town, you were in a strange crib and you cried a little more than usual going to sleep. I sat on the steps outside your door and rocked back and forth, caught myself saying you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay. Caught myself reliving your first surgery, the one we had no vocabulary for, the one where I could feel our ancestors huddled around to make sure you were okay. The one where I paced the halls of the hospital willing you with them to be okay, to be okay, to be whole and right.

I haven't been drinking now for about a month, so the things I self-medicated into oblivion are starting to become conscious. One of the big but recently buried ones is the worry from the summer that you would have died at just a few days old. You didn't, you obviously didn't, but I still carry around the fear that you would have. And with it the worry that somehow we'll hurt you, or let the world hurt you.

Realizing the depth of that has helped me to release some of it. Made me more willing to let you cry it out. And here you are, you've gone to sleep. Your dreams each night add magic to the world, make more luck possible. The images, the plots must be absurd.