Chapter 11 Light
Light
Henry
January
Franki dropped off to sleep tonight the moment her head hit the pillow, exhausted. I lay awake beside her. Thinking.
There is no schedule. There is baby-led feeding and doctor appointments and parenting books, but there’s no itinerary that I control. Our newborn eats when he’s hungry. He sleeps when he’s tired. He cries to communicate needs that we can only guess at until we land on the right combination.
I glance at the glowing white numbers of my bedside clock. My son is ninety-two hours old.
My son.
He has my chin and Franki’s eyebrows.
He’s learning moment by moment whether he can trust this life we brought him into. And I don’t have an equation to solve for him.
I can’t write a proof on a SMART Board.
Ian squirms in his bassinet and makes a series of grunting sounds. Immediately, I climb from the bed, fumble for my glasses, and turn the bedside lamp on its lowest setting. If he’s hungry again, Franki will wake to feed him, but she needs as much sleep as she can manage.
I reach him in two steps and bend over to peer down at him.
His grunts turn to a pathetic, half-hearted wail.
I lift him into my arms, careful to hold him the right way, supporting his head. He’s so light. So small.
Mom says we’ll learn what every single one of his cries mean. She says I’ll understand sooner, rather than later. And love is enough to make up the difference.
But what if I don’t find the pattern?
His cries grow a little louder.
He just finished nursing and isn’t rooting. Not hungry, but maybe he needs to burp.
When one of the nurses patted his back the first time, I lost my shit. It seemed too firm for an infant so small. But he liked it.
I lift him to my shoulder and pat his back as I walk with him toward the door. A wet burble erupts from my son.
I freeze.
Note to self: Do not forget to use a burp cloth next time.
Under any other circumstance, the sensation of Ian’s spit up on my shoulder would be distracting. But I can’t think about that now with my chest tightening like a vise with every second of his distress.
Franki sits up sleepily and reaches for her glasses. “Is he hungry?”
I shake my head and bounce him carefully in my arms. “I don’t think so. I’m going to check his diaper. You can sleep. I’ll bring him to you if he needs to nurse.”
Ian grows quiet in my arms. The bouncing appears to be effective. I’ll need to note the details on his spreadsheet. Grunting cries need burping and bouncing.
Franki folds herself back into bed, fully asleep before her head reaches her pillow.
Ian’s wails begin again, despite the bouncing.
Oliver climbs from his bed in the corner, gives himself a shake, then trots at my heels.
The back patting and bouncing aren’t working. Ian’s warm little body has only grown stiffer. When I reach the nursery next door, I turn the light on low and lay him on the changing table.
The sound of Velcro separating adds another layer of sensory overload when I remove his light green swaddling. The moment his arms are free, he throws out little fists, flexing what looks like every muscle in his body.
I smile. “That’s a big stretch.”
He settles into peaceful quiet and peers up at me with eyes not quite able to focus yet.
I make another mental note to add a description of the pitch and rhythm of his grunting cry to the spreadsheet on my phone later.
This doesn’t match my previous data, but his cry was slightly lower and more rhythmic than the times swaddling soothed him.
He frowns, his forehead an angry wrinkle. Then the wails start again.
The pause was seconds long. It wasn’t the swaddling bothering him, but I’d already suspected his need for a diaper change.
I unsnap his pajamas and remove his diaper.
It’s dry. If it wasn’t his diaper—
A stream of urine hits me square in the chest.
“Gah.” I fumble to use his diaper to catch the stream, not nearly fast enough. “Wait wait wait.”
He does not wait.
Oliver gives a single bark at my feet then glares up at me.
Crying infant, barking dog, and me, covered in fluids.
It’s a lot.
“You couldn’t have hit your target better if you’d aimed,” I say.
He stops crying and looks in my general direction with the most intense stare. It’s unlikely he can actually make out much more than a blob. Babies are nearsighted.
I smile and move closer in the hope he can focus on my face. “No one mentioned I’d need to incorporate defensive maneuvers during diaper changes. I’ll do better next time.”
He remains quiet. Watching.
I change his diaper, then tug my shirt off and drop it and his wet pajamas on top of the diaper pail. Wet wipes do the job to clean us both, though now I smell baby fresh.
He screws up his face, his cry no longer pitiful but a blazingly angry vibrato. I dry him, check his umbilical stump, search for anything that might be poking him.
“What’s wrong?” It’s instinct to ask the question aloud. It’s not as though he can answer me.
He stops crying.
And I have no idea why. What do I put on his spreadsheet?
Moments later, he juts out his bottom lip and takes a deep breath, preparing to squall.
“What do you need?” I ask pointlessly.
He settles, his expression smoothing out.
Wait—Surely not. I eye him cautiously.
He puckers up, his chin wobbling. Before he can release another wail, I speak again.
“Ian, do you like my voice? You want me to talk to you?” The effect is immediate.
The fury drains out of him as if someone has turned a dial.
His tiny face smooths, his fists uncurling by degrees while he studies me with grave concentration.
I’ve lectured to halls full of undergraduates.
I’ve defended research before committees that seemed determined to dismantle every claim I made.
None of that has ever left me feeling as exposed as I feel now, standing here in the soft light of the nursery with my shirt discarded and my newborn son evaluating the sound of my voice.
“Good,” I continue carefully. “I can talk.”
Oliver settles at my feet with a quiet huff, apparently satisfied that the crisis has been averted.
“Don’t pretend you knew what he needed any more than I did,” I say dryly.
Oliver rolls his eyes.
I look back at Ian’s little face and speak in a conspiratorial tone. “Our dog is much smarter than people think he is.”
My son blinks up at me.
“My name is Henry, by the way.” I clear my throat. “But you’ll call me Dad.”
His slightly unfocused gaze remains on my face, intent and serious.
“You’re Ian.” I trail my scarred knuckles over the impossibly perfect skin of his cheek. “You arrived ninety-two hours ago. And I already can’t imagine a universe without you in it.”
He makes a small cooing sound.
Encouraged, I rest one hand lightly on his stomach while I speak, steadying him by instinct alone.
“I used to believe that if I studied something long enough, I could understand exactly how it worked,” I say. “The universe encourages that kind of thinking. Entire galaxies behave in ways that can be described with mathematics.”
Ian’s eyelids grow heavier while he listens.
“But you,” I continue softly, fitting his little arms and legs into clean pajamas, “operate on a different set of principles.”
Ian’s content baby noises, the faint jingle of Oliver’s collar, and my voice are the only sounds in the peaceful hush of the nursery. Ian’s fingers curl slowly around my thumb.
“I’ll learn to recognize what you need,” I tell him. “If I don’t get it right away, don’t give up on me, okay? Because I won’t ever give up on you. I promise.”
Ian’s grip tightens slightly.
I lift my glasses and swipe beneath my eye with the heel of my hand then breathe a soft laugh. “Well. You don’t understand what I’m saying. I know that. If it’s okay with you, I’ll just keep on saying it, and one day, you will.”
I swaddle him as I speak, then lift him from the changing table, drawing him carefully against my chest and supporting his head in the palm of my hand. His skin is warm against mine, his cheek settling just below my collarbone as if that part of me had been waiting for him all this time.
He cuddles against me, content but still awake.
Oliver rises and follows us as I move across the room.
“I should warn you,” I murmur, adjusting my hold as I walk toward the window, “that you were born into a household where astronomy is kind of a big deal.”
Outside, the sky stretches over the dark yard, clear and sharp. “Only a place with minimal light pollution has this level of visibility to the naked eye,” I explain.
I shift the curtain aside, lower myself to sit cross-legged on the floor, and angle my body so Ian faces outward and up, though I know the view is currently lost on him.
“That’s all right,” I say. “You have time.”
His breathing remains slow and even. I rest my cheek lightly against the soft fuzz of his hair.
Oliver stands on his back legs and props his paws on my arm near Ian’s feet, his tail wagging.
I straighten and scratch him behind his ear with one hand, then point.
“Down,” I say gently. When Oliver settles with his head on my leg, I pet his long back.
“Ian is a lucky boy to have you as his family. But you have to wait for him to get much, much bigger before you can play. Try not to get him into too much trouble when you do.”
Ian coos. Oliver thumps his tail with happiness. No one can tell me that dog doesn’t know exactly what I just said.
“So. More talking.” I return my full attention to Ian. “The first constellation I ever showed your mother was Cassiopeia.”
The stars are bright tonight, the pattern unmistakable once you know where to look.
“I was twelve,” I continue. “She was eight.”
Ian snuffles.
“I found her hiding.”
The memory rises with total clarity. Franki was a small girl with pink ducky pajamas and a broken heart.
“I didn’t know what to do with a crying kid,” I admit. “So I did the only thing I could think of.”
I look back out through the glass.
“I showed her the stars.”
My hand lifts slightly, tracing the familiar shape beyond the window.
“I was going to tell her that Cassiopeia is easy to find because of its five bright stars,” I say. “They form a distinct pattern that rotates around the pole through the night.”
Ian remains still while I speak, his tiny body settled comfortably against mine.
“But before I could explain the constellation, she said, ‘There’s a W.’ She told me it was pretty,” I say softly. “She was right.” I smile. “She almost always is.”
Ian takes a deep, trembling breath, his eyes closing.
“The sky looks different when the two of you are with me,” I add, softer yet, my speech slow and gentle.
Outside, the stars burn with the same steady brilliance they’ve held for millions of years. I’ve studied them since I was a child.
I smooth my palm over my newborn’s head and study every one of his features: his round cheeks, his button nose, his pink lips, his chin, and long eyelashes, the shape of his ear.
He doesn’t open his eyes or squirm. I lapse into silence, and he sleeps.
I don’t stare at the stars. I watch him.
When I’m as sure as I can get that he won’t wake, I rise and carry him back to our bedroom. Oliver follows and trots to his own bed, settling in.
I place Ian in his bassinet, then remove my glasses and climb under the covers beside my wife.
She rolls toward me and opens her eyes. “Is everything okay?”
I tuck her against me. “Yes.”
She breathes a contented sigh and snuggles closer. “What did he need? Did you put it on your spreadsheet?” she teases gently.
I shake my head. “Me.” My lips tug upward in wonder. “He just needed me.”