I once made a passing remark about how peacefully my son slept while being held. “Wouldn’t we all sleep better if we were held?”, was the response. That comment has troubled me since.
I am roughly three times the size of my son, so I began to picture myself as a full-grown man being held by a comic book-like, giant version of myself as I tried to nestle into his over hairy arms for an afternoon nap. The visual is disturbing! Did that person really think about what she was saying? I wouldn’t sleep better if being held by giant me, I’d be inclined to feel violated, making sleep impossible.
One good thing that has come of this disturbing and recurring nightmare is that I now think I know how to humble my son in his teenage years. When he is being especially disrespectful and showing disdain for his father–as teenage boys will do–I’ll break out the old “remember when I held you tight” routine.
He will make a snide comment and I’ll say “you obviously don’t remember when you were an infant and I’d hold you in these arms” (at this point I’ll extend my aging, hairy arms) “while you slept for hours. There was no place on Earth that you’d rather be.”
I’ll watch him recoil, a pit forming in his stomach as he looks at my outstretched arms and wonders how he ever found comfort in them. While still grappling with this feeling of self-doubt, he’ll also realize how much love I’ve expressed to him through those arms and feel just a teeny tinge of regret for his snide comment. This combination of guilt and shame will nearly cripple his pubescent mind. I’ll give him a big hug and send him off to try to cleanse his mind of those disturbing thoughts. I’ll have him in my pocket again; at least for another hour or two.
