My son Paul moving into a much bigger world…
The morning sunlight breaks through the aging green foliage, creating vivid pockets of contrasting greens….some darker, strong, and rich; some sunlit, brighter, and yellowish-green This morning I am full of ache and love and a touch of sadness. A full array of green.
The other night, my fourteen-year-old son walks into my room just before four in the morning and asks, “Can I sleep in here?” I ask if he is all right but I smile inwardly. I have not seen this boy in quite some time. I miss him. Paul is transforming into a man and glimpses into this disappearing boy are becoming precious.
Since he was little, Paul has been occasionally visited by nightmares and sleep walking. Always in times of transition and new stress, these periods would flash quickly and then disappear just as fast. This time, after the sound of his feet on the wood floor, the darkness carries only a deepening voice and his straightforward request. As I drift back to sleep, I smile because the pattern is continuing. Paul has just finished his second day of high school. His world has shifted.
In the morning, I hear the story. Sound asleep, Paul woke up to the weird sound of a duck quacking. He figured he was dreaming and closed his eyes again. While falling back asleep, the sound re-emerged from a box of childhood stuffed animals now relegated to the corner. He turned on the light. He waited and waited and waited. Nothing. Back to sleep, only to wake again to the same sound. He looked at the clock – 3:48. Paul’s eyes get big when telling me this part, “You know that’s the witching hour….between 3 and 4….I saw it in a scary movie.”
We keep talking. I tell him he was probably dreaming. He looks at me doubtfully. “I heard it, Dad. I know I did.” I try a different tact. “Do you really think that an evil force is coming through an unknown stuffed animal? Paul starts to argue, “You don’t know what is and what isn’t. You always tell me that there is more to the world than what we are told, more than what meets the eyes.” I have to admit that I have told him that. I try a more stern argument. “You have to control your mind; you have to know what’s true. If the sound really did happen, there is a rational explanation.” I can feel myself trying to narrow his world. I can’t believe what I am doing. I hate when adults do this to kids. I try yet another tact, “Why would you suppose the ”more” of the Universe would try to hurt you? Why wouldn’t you think it was benevolent?” Paul looks at me with an expression that borders on disgust, “Cuz that’s not how it works, Dad.”
I realize that Paul and I traveling through a microcosm of a fundamental issue that haunts all of us, that haunts the evolution of our consciousness – how do we sit with and process that fact that there is ‘more’ to the Universe than what is tangible to us? More to me, more to you, more to the Universe. More. This truth scares us. In response, we create stories and mythologies and even religions. Polytheism splits up the ‘more’ into multiple gods – god of this, god of that. Monotheism perhaps represents an evolutionary breakthrough because it centralizes the realization of ‘more’ into a benevolent unity. Still we have doubts. We do not control the ‘more’ that lingers in the darkness and that troubles us. In fact, if one looks at most religious belief systems, the realization of ‘more’ requires a profound surrendering of control. We call it faith.
Paul is currently confronting the ‘more’ in his own microcosm. His world has expanded as he steps into high school. The expectations have increased, the workload, the social pressure, and the social insecurity. He does not show this in his waking life. He does not talk of pressure; he says he feels fine. The ‘more’ is tugging on his unconscious (still another story we accept about the unseen part of us). His uncertainty he feels in the midst of this change is manifesting as an unknown stuffed animal making noise while he sleeps. Or so I try to tell him. He looks at me quietly and shakes his head. Under the guise of helping, I have caused him to doubt his own experience.
The whole episode becomes a joke between us – evil forces reaching through stuffed animals to get him while he sleeps. As he goes to bed the next night, he jokes, “That thing better not start quacking…I need some frickin’ sleep.” Sure enough, an hour into sleeping, the noise starts again. I am working in the living room. His sleepy, hoarse voice, “Dad, do you hear that?!” I definitely do. But, by the time I get to his room and he sits up and turns on the light, the sound has already ceased. We wait and wait…nothing.
This time we bring all his discarded, childhood stuffed animals out to the living room. He needs to sleep. I work and listen for an hour…nothing. Shaking my head, I wheel down to my bedroom. Sure enough, as soon as I am away, the quacking starts again. I race to the box of stuffed animals and start rifling through it. The sound stops. I say out loud that I can’t believe it started making noise exactly when I left the room. I hear Paul yell, “See, I told you….it knows exactly when to make sound and when not too…it’s possessed.” He gets up. We wait. Thankfully it starts again. Paul locates a little yellow duck as the culprit. He takes a scissors, cuts off the head, and finds plastic cell containing a battery. We put it in the garage and smash it. Paul climbs back into bed, “I am so glad the sound was real.” He sleeps peacefully through the night.
I, however, do not. That duck sat in his room for twelve years not making a sound. Then it happens on his second night of high school, during a period of time when an important transition out of childhood is occurring. The transition is scary as is the mysterious, unsolicited sound from a vestige of childhood. This is a wonderful juxtaposition of symbolism. I do not believe that the events are pure coincidence. I also do not believe that Paul’s transition caused the events. I am left with two stories, two shades of green that can create a beautiful whole if I am strong enough to allow it.
Paul has moved on. He has no problem not tying these two threads together. He is still at ease with the discordant richness and fullness of the Universe. I must not push him into a world devoid of contrasting shades of green. Instead, I need to reopen to the world that he still inhabits.