My daughter Skyla can be a little devil when it comes to going to sleep. While brother Julius tends to nod off quickly in his bed just above her, Skyla, who's almost 4, typically takes longer to lull into dreamland. She calls for her "night-night drink." Becomes alert and chatty. Demands songs.
Not long ago, though, all my irritation slipped away. At least for one "bedtime." If parenting is a marathon, as my friend Holly recently suggested, then I experienced to the equivalent of "the Runner's high." A moment of fatherly euphoria that I hope to hold onto.
It began with me in our "front room"--that is, the room that doubles in our one-bedroom apartment as the grown-ups' bedroom and the living room. Recently, I heard the theory that small homes breed intimacy among family members. And the events of this particular evening suggest there's something to that idea. I was in the midst of writing an email to friends praising Leonard Cohen's song "If It Be Your Will" when I heard Skyla singing from down the hallway--something I probably wouldn't have noticed if we lived in a 3,500-square foot home.
Perhaps I was inspired by Cohen's lyrics: "If it be your will/That a voice be true/From this broken hill/I will sing to you." In any event, Skyla's singing struck me not as annoying like--I'm embarrassed to admit--it often does at bedtime. It struck me as interesting.
***
I walked into her room and was surprised to find that she was singing to herself. I continued through the kids' room into the kitchen and saw Rowena washing dishes. Rowena said Skyla didn't seem to need her, and that was certainly true. I decided on the spot to record her, and went in search of my digital recorder. I found it, but it was full and I spent several minutes trying to figure out if I should download some audio files from work, or if I should erase one of them, or if I should abandon the recording project altogether.
During this futzing, Skyla shifted out of self-sufficiency and into song-request mode. Rowena agreed to comply. Skyla then said something about how losing her "snuggy" turtle "would make me sooo sad,"--her voice an adorable combination of melodrama and innocence. I decided to erase a non-critical audio file and get recording.
After a bit of singing from Rowena, I agreed to take over the lullabying. But in keeping with the user-generated-content era into which she was born, Skyla had a highly participatory vision.
Me: "Papa sing you some songs?"
Skyla: "Um-hmm. But I'll think about some songs, and you do them, Ok?"
I said I would try. Now, I'd assumed Skyla meant she would name some familiar tunes and I'd proceed to perform them. But this underestimated her. By "think about songs," she meant create new ones.
Her first request: "Wide and Deep and Wide and Deep. Keep doing like that."
Skyla loves a church song titled "Deep and Wide." So I started singing: "Deep and Wide, Deep and Wide, there's a fountain--"
Her: "No, Wide--Wide and Deep."
Me: "It's a new one?"
Her: "Yeah. Wide and Deep."
So I start singing "Wide and Deep...," but Skyla soon provided a new direction.
Her: "No, Deep and White."
Me: "Deep and Wide?"
Her: "No, Deep and White."
That elicited from me a spontaneous song that, while clumsy in its cadence, had --I think-- the spark of an intriguing notion: that life is a journey from a brightly lit outer fold of God's robe through the darker valley of that fold and back to the other bright side.
Me: "Deep and white, deep and white, my lord wears robes that are deep and white.
Deep and white, my lord's robes are full of endless light.
His robes are deep as you move through them
all your life as you try to go
from the light back to the light
after you pass through some darkness of the fold
and sometimes seeing light
Deep and white, deep and white..."
Skyla didn't applaud the song, but neither did she boo. She moved on to some variations. There was a call for a "Feet and Deep and Wide." I did my best to make up such a song.
Then she riffed about the artistic process.
Her: "I'm thinking of a song."
Me: "What is your song?"
Her: "I don't know yet. I'm thinking of it. It takes a long time."
After a few moments, she burst out with "Deep and Wide and Head"!
And here she added a bodily dimension to the song-creation.
"Here is deep," she said, pointing to her belly. "Here is wide," she said, pointing to her chest. "Here is...," and she trailed off, but I think she realized her head was signaled by the fact she was talking with it.
The official lyrics of "Deep and Wide" are "Deep and Wide, Deep and Wide, there's a fountain flowing deep and wide." Skyla decided to map more of the song to her body. "Here is the fountain," she said, pointing to her throat.
I thought that was brilliant, and told her so. And to my delight she took the physical-musical connection one step further. She made another "Deep and Wide" request, but I couldn't make out what the added term was. "Car?" I asked. No, that wasn't it.
She began punching her finger through the air, saying "This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one."
Her: "Dad, what do you tink that shape is?"
Me: "What's that shape that you made with your finger?"
Her: "Yeah."
Me: "Was it a fountain?"
Her: "Nooo."
Me: "Was it a car?"
Her: "No."
Me: "What was it?
Her: "Guess--because I can't really say it very well."
Me: "A star?"
Her: "Yes."
So the song was "Deep and Wide and Star." And I took a shot at a song about stardust and stars twinkling and the universe's bigness.
***
That pretty much sapped the rest of my song-writing energies. I figured we were ready for some preexisting songs. So I launched into an old bedtime standard for me: Neil Young's "Four Strong Winds."
But before I could get to much singing, Skyla reminded me that her brother had lost a tooth. This was the big news of the day in our household: Julius, almost 6, had lost his first tooth. And with the tiny incisor under his pillow, the tooth fairly would be visiting this very evening.
Skyla did some extrapolating about her brother's tooth loss. And in doing so, she led us into a conversation by turns sweet, existential, poetic and Tarantino-esque.
Her: "Dadda, one day I'm going to lost all my tooth-es."
Me: "Yeah, you are, Sky."
Her: "This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one."
Me: "Yep."
Her: "I'm going to lost that many tooths. And I'll grow bigger tooth-es."
Me: "You will grow bigger tooths...tooth-es."
Her: "But if I don't have any tooth-es, I can't eat anyting."
Me: "That's a problem, yeah. You know, when you're old, you also lose teeth, Sky. You get two sets of teeth, and when you get real old they start falling out, usually. And some older people put in, like, fake teeth, so they can eat things. You still would be able to eat things like smoothies and orange juice, which is good."
Her: "Without teeth?"
Me: "Without teeth, when you get really old. Grandma Richie had fake teeth. Grandma Richie lost her teeth. Great-grandma Richie."
Her: "And she got fake teeth."
Me: "Um-hmm. That's what she used before she died to eat."
Her: "And does she still have them?"
Me: "You know, she's not really...not really, no. Because her spirit has left her body and the world, I think."
Her: "And did she die?"
Me: "When she died. Yeah."
Her: "I know people die and they aren't at home anymore."
Me: "They're not in their home anymore?"
Her: "Yeah. And she's not in her home any....She died where the people die. So when people die, they're in the hiding place."
Me: "They are kind of in a hiding place from us, because we can't see them. But I think they're sort of --"
Her: "-- Maybe they're upstairs."
Me: "-- in a special world."
Her: "Maybe they're in a special room that we are next to. Or...or on the moon."
Me: "Maybe they are on the moon. Maybe they are in that special room you're talking about."
Her: "Or in a special elevator that takes...that takes people that died."
Me: "Um hmm. I think they get to go be with God and the Goddess. And with other spirits. Other people that lived before."
Her: "Or maybe they are going to be living in the special elevator."
Me: "Maybe. No one knows for sure what happens. That's one of the, kind of--that's a mystery of life."
Her: "Yeah, if someone goes in somewhere, they will kill you."
I burst out laughing here. Despite the horrific vision, something about the abrupt turn in the conversation and the way Skyla said "Keeel" cracked me up. Eventually, I managed to respond.
Me: "I don't want to go there, then."
Her: "Me either."
Me: "I don't think there's an elevator like that, though."
***
At this point, I figured it was about time for Skyla to go to sleep. But she protested. So I sang some more of our standards, starting with John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy"--which becomes "Beautiful Boy and Girl" in our family. Then Sinead O'Connor's "In this Heart."
I've long loved this tune for its gorgeous harmonies and bittersweet lyrics. But this evening, the words spoke directly to my relationship with Skyla.
"This is my grief for you. For only the loss of you, the hurting of you," I sang. It was about the pain of losing every stage of Skyla as she grows up.
"There are rays on the weather. Soon, these tears will have cried. All loneliness have died." I saw us reconnecting time and time again.
"I will have you with me. In my arms only. For you are only my love, my love, my love." I've quarreled with this last section. Doesn't saying you are "only my love" reduce the other person? But tonight, these lyrics sort of worked. I saw Skyla always being with me, always having a place in my heart. Perhaps there is a piece of her that belongs to no one but me. And the "only my love" phrase got at the way she is this pure expression of love to me.
***
As I finished singing "In This Heart," I moved onto humming. But I quickly decided I should sing another song with lyrics before Skyla complained about the lack of words--as she has in the past. So somehow I hit upon the middle of "Close to You." The Carpenters' classic is a fitting song for her, and was a fitting song for the evening. Fitting for Skyla partly because when she was in the womb, I would sing it to her. We had been concerned that Skyla was in a breech position, and we therefore would not be able to have the home birth we were planning. Singing from the end of the birth canal was supposed to encourage a breeched fetus to flip around.
But besides that history, "Close to You" fits Skyla because the lyrics capture her physicality and her spirit: "On the day that you were born, the angels got together, and decided to create a dream come true. So they sprinkled moondust in your hair, and golden starlight in your eyes of blue." Skyla's eyes are green-brown, but they sparkle. And her hair can have a silvery glint as she sprints down the block.
"Close to You" belonged this evening because it is about gratitude, about praise. And beginning with the way I heard Skyla singing from the other room, the night was about appreciating my little lady. On this night, I felt moondust and starlight were real in her. I recognized her miraculousness, her cosmic power and presence. Her divinity. I was awed to be Close to Her.
So much so that I came in late on my favorite section: the "Waahs" as in "Waaah, ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh, Close to You." What should have been a "Waahh" turned into an "Aaaah."
I finished the song. And what do you know? My little angel was asleep.
