Every night, I wake up about a minimum of 10 times. One time is to a drink of water (as Audrey refuses to have any cup or glasses on the night stand and the one night I tried a water bottle, she knocked it off the table with a loud thump, waking us all), the other nine times are to check that Mason is breathing. During each of these subsequent wake-ups, I often stare in awe at him. A lot of these times, I stare at he and Audrey in awe.
When I was about 18 months old, my dad put me to bed in my crib in my own room. For some reason, perhaps it was that parental clairvoyance we are all given upon the birth of our first child, he came back into check on me a little while later and found me blue and not breathing. As the story goes, I died and was revived by the paramedics before making my way to the hospital where I was subsequently put into an oxygen tent. In this tent, I couldn't breathe as well, so my grandmother would take me out. The nurses would put me in, grandmother would take me out. Eventually, grand mother's wisdom won out over nurse's persistence to the rules, and I was allowed to live happily ever after.
Due completely to this affair, which I don't even remember and could, for all intents and purposes, be a complete fabrication, I awake every evening, about 10 times, and I check my sons breathing. I have no rational reason to fear he will stop breathing, but somewhere in my sleep, that story comes to the top, and I find myself, night after night, awaking and laying my hand on his chest, turning my ear to hear that soft hum of his snoring, or I stare into the night light, watching the ebb and flow of the sheets against his chest.
