I had Will in July of 2008. He spent a week in the NICU because he was just a little 5 pounder, or as my sister fittingly announced, 20 quarter-pounders. Three weeks earlier, one of my closest friends had a little boy. He also spent a week in the NICU. Both of them needed their blood sugar levelled out. But Lyle’s was the opposite he was an 11 pounds! When Lyle was closing in on two months and Will just passed one… they hung out. Or rather they lay together and Will’s skin hung out..or off his body. God look at that thing!
This weekend the boys hung out again and it was the first time that I noticed they are exactly the same height, same sort of body shape. Will started life half the size. Things just have a way of catching up I guess.
Something else caught up with me this weekend.
Watching Lyle and his amazing older brother together made the only child guilt catch up to me. It always sneaks around in the back of my mind but a rested, logical me can generally keep it at bay.
Lately, the other guilt has been catching up with me too. The ‘I’m depriving you of a father’ guilt. I’ve kept that one at bay for a long time but now that his friends are starting to ask more and more questions about why he doesn’t have a dad, I feel it sneaking up on me, preparing for when he starts to ask the same.
The rational part of me understands that I’m giving him all that I can and that he has a pretty sweet gig. But the part of me who hasn’t slept properly in weeks has been really feeling it lately.
(Whoa did he sense I wrote that? He just slept walked down the stairs and curled up on my lap and went back to sleep!).
Guilt is an interesting emotion and one that Lyle’s older brother Jasper explained to Will about this weekend. Tonight he broke a glass and said, ‘I feel that thing that Jasper was telling me about. I know it was an accident but I feel that thing.’ I looked over at him and said ‘you feel guilty?’ and he nodded. I kept telling him not to worry about it and in my mind I was thinking that it’s such a waste to feel guilty.
Guess I should listen to my own words, don’t give guilt the time of day and get some sleep.
Oh and prepare to get the kid a dog when he eventually lays the guilt on me for denying him siblings and a dad. Come on, guilt is a hard one to work through. And face it, it’s WAY easier to get him a dog than the other two.
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