Minutes after learning I hadn't received a job I'd worked very hard to get, he began working the phones on my behalf.
He once drove into town from his farm 60 miles away for a 6:30 a.m. breakfast he'd arranged for me with a prospective employer. And he all but shrugged off a tragedy in his own life to help celebrate the miracle in ours.
He's the guy you can tell anything to and ask anything of. Never, ever judges.
So it is no surprise that on Friday night, as we discussed the joys, and perhaps more to the point - the extreme difficulties - of having triplets, Ron picked me up once again.
As the babies' first month at home melts into the second, and the shiney newness has begun to soften just a bit, the adrenaline that carried us through the first several weeks has begun to dull a bit too. The nights are longer, with less sleep. As we get more tired, the boys seem to eat more slowly. The feedings stretch from one early-morning hour into the next, and we wonder how long we'll have to pat their little backs before the burps come.
And believe me, you want the burps to come. If a baby doesn't burp, the brothers don't sleep. And if the brothers don't sleep, the parents don't sleep.
Every morning, after the 5 a.m. feeding, I put the baby I'm holding back into his bed, and I trudge down the stairs to get ready for work. There is no end to the routine. Some nights, it seems there will be no reprieve.
Ron knew I was wearing down. He probably saw it in my eyes. Maybe he heard it in my voice. Maybe it was that I mashed up chords to songs we've played together 100 times. After we'd packed up our gear and headed home from our Friday night gig, he did what he always does.
Sometimes it's tough to know when he's holding me accountable. He never rebukes. He doesn't criticize. He simply reminds me of important, basic truths in his forward-looking, ever-optimistic way. Like, knock off this obsessive focus on how difficult things are in the short-term and focus instead on the long-term, the big picture, the incredible family that needs me to keep my head about me.
He said, in other words, that my problem was my state of mind.
It had to be the timing. This was stuff I already knew. But, as always, he said what I needed, when I needed it. So I woke up early Saturday morning and happily fed all three boys by myself. Then I shuffled my wife and daughters off to the Cheyenne Frontier Days parade, and I cleaned the house while they were gone.
It felt great. It was, as I told my wife that afternoon, the easiest work I've ever done. When I stopped complaining, for just a moment, about how tired I was and instead focused on the wonder in my life, my little boys began to look like miracles again.
Now I'm aware that sleep deprivation is often used as a form of torture, and I have become reacquainted recently with its very real physical impacts. But dealing with it, for me, is a matter of the mind.
Sometimes I just need someone to help make the obvious clear again.
Thanks, Ron.
No comments:
Post a Comment