Dream Lite Tonight

This past Monday would've been my father's 80th birthday. Since it's been fourteen years since he passed away, it's always been with a certain sense of melancholy that I greet the 26th of August each year. He's come and gone, but he still remains in so many ways and though all the healing that's ever going to get done has already happened, there's still a certain ache to that day which can linger.

So it was that I wandered through Monday and Tuesday in a bit of a fog. Until last night that is, when, for no particular reason at all, I decided to kick it with the kids at bedtime. It was an impromptu sort of thing. They were tucked in with the lights out when I realized I left something in their room. As I crept in, I found them both dreamily gazing up at the light display from Sophia's Dream Lite Pillow Pet (a ladybug, of course). This has become a nightly ritual that I've been missing out on somehow, so I abandoned the search for what I was looking for, laid down on Sophia's bed and asked my children to tell me about the star and moon lights up there on the ceiling and to share their favorite memories of the day.

For Sophia it was playing and learning "more math". For Anthony it was his science class, where he learned how to use a microscope for the first time. I also learned some Dream Lite secrets, namely that as the lights fade in and out, they do so on a fifteen minute timer (Anthony's observation, of course) and that if you follow the lights around the room it helps you go to sleep better (Sophia, Princess of Sleep's observation).

Before long we had talked and laughed ourselves out. Mom yelled from the next room that it was bedtime, the kids had to be up early, it was past 9pm, blah, blah. As I said my farewells, my son made me promise that next time I will lay down on his bed so he gets a turn and my daughter held me tight around the neck, ran her tiny fingers through my beard and whispered in my ear that, actually, tonight, this moment, had really been her favorite part of the day.

My melancholy blues instantly evaporated. Proving once again that in the face of life - of truly living? Death doesn't stand a chance.