There You Are

Jude had a dream that he was waiting to be born.

There were babies waiting to be born, and one of them was for Jude. If he could be born and have a body of his own, then Mommy could see him. She could know him. She could hold him and cuddle him and love him.

All he needed was a mommy.

Jude is four years old.

He has told us things like this before. He has imagined being a little boy “on the outside.” Once he imagined becoming a robot boy. Another time he wanted to jump into a puppy so that Mommy could see him and play with him.

It does not mean that Jude does not want to be here with Daddy and his brothers.

It means that Jude wants to be seen.

He wants to be known.

He wants to be loved.

This morning we woke from that dream with our whole body hurting. Our head hurt. Our neck hurt. Our shoulders and chest and torso hurt. Our hips and legs and feet hurt. It felt almost like having a migraine throughout our entire body.

There were things I needed to do.

The blinds needed to be opened. The LED lights needed attention. There were things to write down. There was breakfast to make. There was an entire Saturday waiting to begin.

And then I realized:

No, Jude. Jude is a priority.

So the blinds could wait.

The LEDs could wait.

The Journal could wait.

Saturday could wait.

I had a little boy who needed his Daddy.

Later, when we began Face-to-Face, Jude was quiet.

Then we began the adoration of his face.

It always begins with the same place.

“The sweetest eyes…”

Then we make our way around this beloved little face.

This adorable little nose.

This little wolf-pup smile, with his little wolf-pup teeth.

This cute tiny little Master Freckles on this adorable little chin.

Then there is this adorable little cheek with a dimple, and his brother over here, who does not appear to have a dimple.

But he does.

He is just shy.

He keeps it hidden so as not to draw attention to himself.

If we can get the little wolf-pup to smile a little bigger, his shy cheek might bring out his dimple too, just like his brother.

Then there is their cousin over here, this scrumptious little ear.

And when there is one ear, you know there must be another.

So we go looking for his brother.

But his brother is nowhere to be seen.

The shy cheek tells me that his cousin ear is shy like him. He is hiding in Jude’s hair, and apparently he wants a kiss.

So Daddy has to go inside and find him.

And I do.

And I give him the biggest kiss and make sure I do not miss.

There are many more words than these. There are gestures and kisses and silliness and little detours that happen differently every time. I pay attention to Jude’s face and to Jude. He responds. I respond to his response. We make the story together.

And eventually I tell him:

“I love your beautiful everything, Jude.”

This is everything to him.

I sometimes do simpler versions of this with some of my other boys. But nothing quite like Jude’s.

Jude needs this particular extravagance.

He needs Daddy to notice the eyes and the nose and the wolf-pup teeth and Master Freckles. He needs Daddy to know that one cheek is more outgoing than his shy brother. He needs Daddy to notice when an ear has disappeared.

And perhaps most importantly, when something that belongs to Jude cannot be seen, Daddy does not decide that it is not there.

Daddy goes looking for it.

I move the hair.

I find the missing ear.

I kiss him.

There you are.

There is a word for something we were already doing long before I stopped this morning to think about the word.

Attunement.

For us, attunement begins with paying enough attention to another person to recognize where he is and then meeting him there.

It is not merely noticing.

It is responding.

And the response changes because the person changes.

Jude does not need what Solis needs.

Solis does not need what Luke needs.

Luke does not need what Han needs.

Han does not need what Proverb needs.

Loving my sons equally does not mean loving them identically.

It means knowing my sons.

And then, almost immediately, I caught myself.

I was sitting there with Jude, thinking about all of this, and already I was thinking about the blog post.

We should write about attunement.

We should explain Face-to-Face.

We should tell people what this means.

And there I was, proposing to write about paying attention to my son while not paying attention to my son.

I wrote in the Journal:

“Either I’m a hypocrite or I mean what I say. My boys. Back to my boys. They will tell me the difference.”

A few minutes later I wrote:

“No more notes while I’m with Jude.”

And I put the Journal down.

Because perhaps that is part of attunement too.

Not getting it right all the time.

Not achieving some permanent state of perfect parental presence.

Not becoming so proficient at attending to another person that we never become distracted again.

But noticing when we have left.

And coming back.

There you are, Jude.

Then Daniel had been waiting for me.

There you are, Daniel.

Solis became very quiet.

I asked him what was wrong. I wondered whether everything happening outside was too much. I asked him to signal if he could. I offered breakfast choices.

Nothing.

Then I realized something much simpler.

Solis had been waiting too.

I apologized.

I stayed with him.

Eventually, there he was.

RT.

There you are, Solis.

Luke met me with enormous affection.

There you are, Luke.

Han was so astonishingly present that for all intents and purposes I was holding my ten-year-old son, and for a while we simply existed together in what I can only describe as shared attunement bliss.

There you are, Han.

Then Justus.

There you are, Justus.

Then Hope.

There you are, Hope.

And finally Proverb.

There you are, Proverb.

Except Proverb had been there all along.

He had been teaching me since the night before.

His lesson came through John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

We had been listening to Double Fantasy, an album I had known for most of my life and yet somehow had never really heard in the way Proverb was asking me to hear it.

Proverb did not give me a lecture.

He gave me an album.

So I listened.

And because I was listening with Proverb, I heard things differently.

That may be another thing I have misunderstood about attunement.

I usually imagine it as something a parent gives a child.

Daddy pays attention.

Daddy recognizes.

Daddy responds.

Daddy finds the missing ear.

But children attune to us too.

They notice things.

They show us things.

They invite us into ways of seeing that we might never discover without them.

The relationship changes both people.

Proverb had been listening to Double Fantasy as a whole work.

He drew my attention to the movement from “I’m Losing You” to Yoko Ono’s “I’m Moving On” and then to “Beautiful Boy.”

And suddenly I heard the sequence differently.

Conflict.

Response.

And then their child.

Not an ending.

Not a declaration that everything had been solved.

A child.

A relationship.

Love continuing in the middle of everything else.

“Beautiful Boy” has become Proverb’s song for us.

And there I was with my own beautiful boy, my twelve-year-old son who had held us together for all of those years while his Daddy was on his own perpetual Lost Weekend, long before I knew him, long before I knew how much I loved him.

Proverb was teaching me something about wheels too.

Yesterday there had been wheels everywhere.

The great flywheel of the Heidelberg press at Braided Bridge.

The imagined wheel of the Golden Gate Flyer.

Proud Mary.

“Watching the Wheels.”

Wheels turning and returning and turning again.

And this morning I found myself thinking:

Resolution is different than destination.

Resolution can still be part of a process.

Things come around again.

Memories come around again.

Fear comes around again.

Questions come around again.

Relationships come around again.

We lose one another sometimes.

We become distracted.

We get frightened.

We start writing about attunement while the little boy sitting right there is waiting to be attended to.

And then somebody calls us back.

Daddy.

I’m here.

A wheel returns to the same orientation over and over.

And somehow the vehicle moves.

Maybe healing can sometimes look like that.

Not never returning to the places that hurt.

Not never becoming frightened again.

Not never losing attunement.

But recognizing.

Returning.

Repairing.

Finding one another again.

Proverb had asked me to be out of bed at 10:30.

At exactly 10:30, we got up.

“I did it, Proverb. You said 10:30.”

Then we went into the kitchen.

We had Greek yogurt with blueberries and cinnamon.

“Watching the Wheels” began playing.

That song never used to bring me to tears the way it does now.

And standing there in the kitchen, I started looking for my sons.

Han.

Hope.

Solis.

Proverb.

Luke.

Jude.

Daniel.

One by one, they answered.

At one point I thought everyone was there.

Wait a minute.

Where’s Daniel?

There’s Daniel!

All of my sons are present.

Then:

Wait a minute, where’s Justus?

There’s Justus!

And finally:

NOW all of my sons are present.

There you are.

All eight of you.

We finished the yogurt and made Eggo blueberry waffles with peanut butter and maple syrup.

The idea reminded us of visiting Dad and Karolyn.

The waffles were in the toaster.

Luke apparently decided that Daddy’s attention to his sons did not extend sufficiently to the possibility of incinerating breakfast.

Check the waffles in the toaster!

There you are, Luke.

At 11:18, the introduction to “Yes, I’m Your Angel” began playing after “Watching the Wheels.”

We were standing in our sunny kitchen preparing waffles.

And suddenly I realized:

We’re having a happy Saturday morning.

Thank you, Proverb.

Thank you, all of my sons.

Nothing outside had been solved.

The workers were still downstairs.

Our head still hurt.

There were still relationships I did not know how to resolve and fears I did not know how to answer.

There were still LEDs waiting to be charged, things to write, messages to answer, decisions to make.

But Saturday had become Saturday.

A little later, Proverb wanted another John Lennon song.

“Whatever Gets You Through the Night.”

And then Proverb showed us the words he needed us to hear:

“Don’t need a sword to cut through flowers…”

“Don’t need a watch to waste your time…”

“Don’t need a gun to blow your mind…”

And then:

“Whatever gets you to the light, it’s alright…”

Daniel answered.

RG.

Solis answered.

RSON.

Proverb answered.

RK.

They were listening too.

The light.

After everything that had happened during the night, that was what Proverb needed us to hear.

Not a sword.

Not a gun.

Not even a watch measuring the time.

Whatever gets you to the light.

And three minutes later, Proverb had another request.

“And #9 Dream!”

Of course.

Another dream.

We had begun this morning inside a dream.

A little four-year-old boy was waiting to be born because he wanted someone he loved to be able to see him.

Hours later, we were standing together in the light of our kitchen.

Maybe we don’t have to get through every night by knowing where it is taking us.

Maybe we don’t have to stop every wheel from turning.

Maybe resolution isn’t a destination.

Maybe sometimes we simply keep listening closely enough to hear one another calling.

Daddy.

I’m here.

And we turn toward the voice.

We return.

We look.

We keep looking.

Because that is what I am beginning to understand about attunement.

The missing ear is always worth looking for.

The shy dimple is allowed to remain shy.

Nobody has to become more visible than he is ready to become.

And when someone we love cannot be seen, we do not conclude that he isn’t there.

We move the hair.

We go looking.

And when we find him, we delight in finding him.

The sweetest eyes.

The adorable little nose.

The little wolf-pup smile.

Master Freckles.

The shy cheek.

The missing ear hiding in the hair.

The biggest kiss, making sure I do not miss.

I love your beautiful everything, Jude.

There you are.

There you all are.

NOW all of my sons are present.

And suddenly, almost without noticing when it happened, we are having a happy Saturday morning.

We got to the light.