It’s been like 4 hours since I realized I lost that shit. I think I’ve also lost like 5 pounds of sweat just looking for it. Meanwhile, my son and stepson are basically looking after themselves. I think I should pack em up and go to my boys house and see if he’s got anything. I’ve got like a half hour before I start to get real ill.
Fuck. Let me go check the car one more time.
I walk outside and the air is cold. The kinda cold that would’ve made my eyes tear up if I wasn’t so dehydrated. The kind of cold that in a few years is gonna have me sleeping in my car shivering. It’s gonna have me in a rest stop bathroom on 83 in between Bmore and York for 45 minutes at a clip, just to get warm. This is the cold that’ll have me posted up in the library for 6 hours after I cop my dope because where the fuck else am I going to go? Home? You think I can go home and face them? You think I want them to see me like this?
I’ll go to the library and figure out a way to stop living like this. What I mean is, I’ll figure out a different way, a better way from the 3,000 ways I’ve tried before.
Fast forward thru about 6 or 7 years of the most brutalizing, torturous, pain ridden and pain inflicting, death and despair filled, emptiness and hopelessness you can possibly fathom to today.
My phone went off at 5:45, I was still asleep. I got a voicemail a few minutes later saying that schools were closed. WTF? I looked outside and everything was white. An hour or so later I get a text saying that work is canceled. Perfect.
The baby woke up in a great mood and he stayed like that all day. My oldest was in a great mood when I saw him. He kept disappearing to build some city or something on his laptop. He surfaced to practice his sarcasm and “allow” me to make him food, nachos on request for lunch.
I feel like I have a mini me on my hands when dealing with both of them.
My 2 year old is talking up a storm but mostly using words in a language he must make up as he goes along…and does so with enthusiasm. He has a sense of humor already and I love it. He gives me kisses all day and says “Daddy I luff you” after every time. He calls for his brother when he’s out of eye shot.
But today he did something that I never expected.
Today my oldest son was in his room and out of no where the baby said to me “Daddy, where Canaan? Where Canaan, Daddy?”
I said, “I don’t know, call him.”
“Canaan! Where are you?”
Canaan hollers back from his room. The baby runs down the hall and stands outside of his door.
I’m standing at the end of the hallway looking.
“Canaan? I luff you. You take a medicine?”
I almost dropped to me knees.
My two year old son was making sure his older, epileptic, seizure prone brother took the medicine he needed so that he wouldn’t have a seizure.
Now, I understand that children parrot those around them. That’s fine. That’s partly the point here. That today my kids are hopefully going to be parroting the love that I give them instead of the evil I spread before.
Another point is that my 2 year old chose that subject manner and delivery to parrot in the first place.
But the most important part to me, happened on the other side of that door. I couldn’t see it. The baby couldn’t see it. But my heart felt it.
I imagined how much Canaan’s heart must’ve filled up with love at that moment.
The baby only knows so many words. But he knew the words perfectly to make sure his brother is ok and make sure he knew he is loved. Canaan has gone through more heartache caused by me in his first 7 years on this earth than most do in their lives. But not today.
As a father, I don’t think I could’ve felt another example of pure love more moving than I did at that moment. I am so blessed to be able to experience and see these things. I am so blessed that not only can I be present (physically, mentally and emotionally) to see these things in the first place, but also that my vision is no longer clouded with hate and remorse, so much so that I only saw things that served me and could never be open enough to receive any kind of Divine Love long enough to learn how to spread it around.