Sometimes, important things are reduced to little.
I became aware of this again a few weeks ago, when on the way to school with my son, I passed a mother with her baby in her arms, spinning in circles around the same doorway – I sensed it was her house –, swinging that creature with a mixture of sweetness and desperation that my own knew: a child and that resists, with that equally profound mixture, to let go inside.
Children are like that. They don’t know how to fall asleep alone, or recognize sleep; paradoxically, sleep makes them spin wildly, causes delirious and strabismic hyperactivity; they are never cold, never thirsty, and they hate changes of state: they didn’t want to go to the park, but now they don’t want to go home; they didn’t want to bathe, but now they don’t want to get out of the water; They didn't want to wear those pants, but now that you've seen they don't match, there's no way you'll get them to agree to wear other ones.
Eventually, you learn to live with the kind of exasperation only they can provoke. Nothing has pushed me to the limit like my son, nothing has made me feel so useless, helpless, and incompetent, so clumsy and lost.
When he found out I was supposed to be a father, one of my best friends gave me some advice I've remembered more than once: there will come a time when you want to throw your child out a window (or throw yourself out, I might add); don't feel guilty about it (and don't throw them out, I might add).
But there are good things about them too. In fact, mostly good things. There's nothing like the laughter of a child. There's nothing like watching them grow, becoming a person, seeing how, little by little, they get rid of you and begin to be in the world making their own shadow and not under yours.
And, above all, I would say that there is no feeling comparable to seeing your baby close their eyes and fall asleep, especially when you've been trying for hours and hours. There is no comparable situation. The comfort you feel when you breathe deeply and know that your child is resting is one of the most intense and grateful feelings I have ever experienced, a kind of unique relief.
My son was one of those who didn't want to miss anything: until he was three, he didn't sleep more than three or four hours at a time, and during his first years of life, it was common to spend the nights going from one bed to another, from one room to another, from the bedroom to the living room while trying to get someone to sleep.
His mother spent most of the night with him. So that he could get some sleep, I would get up early some mornings and go out into the street with the stroller, driving around and around. I remember pushing the stroller back and forth when I stopped at a traffic light, there where the paving stones have circular reliefs so that blind people know where to stop: I would stop there for a long time, back and forth, waiting for the miracle to happen.
Inevitably, the miracle would happen.
My son would close his eyes.
And I would feel that peace, as if a war had ended or as if all the pieces of the puzzle that is the world had suddenly fit together. Sometimes, as I said, the truly important things are very small: like a child's balls locking themselves in.
