Geiger Counter

Someone must have broken into our house… My eyes pop open in the dark when I hear footsteps in the house. The rest of my body remains still, but those orbs, their powers completely stripped away by the night, stand at futile attention while I lie in bed. I hear a door open, then what sounds like a Cossack dancing down the hallway. Someone is running and leaping toward me, crashing violently into things along the way.  “I’m too tired to fight to the death,” I think for a moment. “Can’t this wait until morning?” The footsteps thump closer to my bedroom door, then veer off into the nearby bathroom.  This is probably not an intruder trying to elude detection, I realize. Murderers and robbers usually don’t slam the toilet seat down in this manner. This is someone completely at home but only half awake. Someone who is seven years old and was not supposed to drink so much water right before bedtime. By now I know what’s coming next; the dramatic opening of the door to our chamber, and the ebullient slamming of that same moveable barrier. Our daughter climbs recklessly into bed, reaching blindly for something to guide her. I hold out my arm, which she grasps as she scuttles up and then down, deep under the covers. As she descends, she presses her cold feet against me, sighs the words, “Hi, Dad” and goes instantly back to sleep for a few more hours. Children are like that; they can fall immediately back to sleep without a second thought, like a cat. I, on the other hand, am profoundly awake. This is the very antithesis of slumber. My day is only a few seconds old and I have already braced myself for hand-to-hand combat with a burglar, already been grasped and kicked and called by my true name, “Dad.”  In those initial seconds, I am raw consciousness without jobs or names or even a proper shirt or pants. (I am sleeping in something I bought called “Mountaineering Pants,” just in case I wake up in shape and suddenly want to scale Kilimanjaro immediately.) In my mind, during these early moments, there are no politics, no popular culture, no Overton window, no trending superfood or shocking scandal. Our identities are inexorably linked to our relationships with the things around us, and with that one word, “Dad,” uttered in the dark, I am gifted mine as I lie there and sense a small person falling deeply asleep next to me. She, like all children, breathes the word like an ancient god, giving life to the soil from which humankind was first molded.  I stay for a little while, long enough to know she is truly asleep and knows she is not alone, before slipping away to sit down in the other room, open my laptop, and write. My exit is the opposite of her entrance. I tiptoe, groping for the picture on the wall that I know hangs next to the door. Then down and slightly to the left, I turn the knob, slide out, cursing myself for once again forgetting to grease the irascible hinge, which has all the strident squealing and absent pathos of a Tweet. With the opening of my computer, the magic of those early moments fades away. I’m greeted by my inbox, essentially a list of grievances with differing attachments and always – always - inspirational quotes at the end, and the news, which is usually that a musician or comedian I like has died of cancer, and that someone I have never met has been accused of doing something horrible.  We have a rule in our house that our daughter, Hadley, should not drink water within one hour before bedtime. The idea is that she will be able to sleep through the night, rather than wake up and soon come dancing into our room. When we actually enforce this rule - and all parents know rules are only effective if enforced sporadically, inconsistently and confusingly, with no rhyme or reason - she stays in her bed until morning, never having to rush to the bathroom, and therefore never choosing to bombard our bed for the night’s final leg of rest. When that happens, I awaken later in the morning, but a little less sure of who I am and why I am here. When that happens, I awake without anyone saying my true name.  Many nights, right before she is supposed to climb into bed, Hadley walks up to me, her chestnut eyes wide, and says: “Dad, I’m thirsty. Can I have a little water?” Some nights, I grab a little cup, then put it back and select a slightly larger one, holding it under the tap for an extra moment or two.  “Sure, honey. Here you go.”