Absence and the heart

This week I’ve been quarantined in my bedroom with the flu. It’s particularly tough because my oldest son, a United States Marine, has been with us during what will likely be his longest leave for some time, and I’ve missed most of it. Today he flies back to base.

My littlest ones, two year-old twins, have decided that I’m being held against my will. They’ve made several forays against the door in an effort to liberate me. I’ll hear them conferring in low chatter down the hallway, then there will be the thundering of little feet as they charge the door, then a catastrophic thump as toddler flesh meets wood. They’re so adept at breaking into/out of every other confinement that I’ve shoved a chair up against the door.

It’s Christmas, and I’m literally barricaded inside my bedroom.

When it’s warm enough the twins play outside. Sometimes they congregate beneath my window. “Papa!” they shout. My older sons pause before some unnamed excursion. “Hi Dad!” they yell up at me. They pile into my truck.

I wave back from where I sit beside the window. My wife comes over to quietly confer with me about the day, how I’m feeling, what people are up to. She confirms that she’s checked everyone’s temperatures and no one else is sick. “I miss you,” she says.

Which could seem like an odd thing to say, given that we’re twelve feet apart and in constant contact. But I’m not there. I’m not with them.

My father-in-law holds the twins’ hands as they traverse the long driveway. In the kitchen below I hear my saintly mother-in-law chatting with one of our family friends.

I’m here and not there. “I miss you,” I tell my wife.

Maybe it’s a cruelty that this is the week all we who are going through the daily Intentional Fathering habits are focused on delighting in our children. Or maybe it’s just another way God is using this project to change one father, me.

Because while it hurts to hear them carrying on with the holidays, to hear the clink of dishes and the occasional bursts of laughter, to get texts telling me what they’re up to and checking on whether I need water or broth, it’s a good kind of hurt, I think. When you can’t hear everything you want to hear, you listen closely. When the ones you love are only in sight for a few minutes, you pay attention. When you can finally taste your broth, you remember it’s a blessing to live in circumstances where food comes easily to your hands.

Yesterday I was well enough to sit on our deck for awhile. The babies were napping, and everyone kept his distance. The sun felt good, though it was cold. One of the twins woke up, and his mother laid hold of him to keep him from running into my arms. She reminded him that I’m sick.

“Want to look at Papa,” he insisted. He sat near her and did just that. And his countenance was warmer than the sun. It was so filled up with unquestioned love that I almost couldn’t bear it. His was the gaze of someone delighting in the one he loves.

It occurred to me in that moment that all these things we fathers are working on: gratitude, delight, kindness, listening—they aren’t habits we need to acquire so much as a remembrance of who we were, back when our hearts were less burdened.