Eveningsong

Some nights when we are lying in bed, bodies disintegrating into the sheets, sinking deep into the mattress, minds evaporating into the surrounding darkness, becoming night ourselves, embracing the sweet oblivion of the often-elusive rest, I will hear Lydia’s voice dancing down the hallway from her bedroom in a high-pitched song—clipping off the walls like a top or a ballerina. And sometimes I am tempted in my exhaustion-drunken state to rage and roar for her to shut her mouth for crying out loud, can’t she see we are trying desperately to snatch at a few moments of blasted sleep, is that too much to ask, is it, IS IT? And sometimes in those moments an awareness flutters like falling ash or snow, like a bright moth, alighting on my consciousness, whispering that this might be a sacred experience, this music being born of a child—a song that has never before existed in the history of the world and likely never will again because it is pure inspiration poured into her soul as she spins and grins in her mirror, standing on her bed and emanating joy. And I think of when she was very small, much smaller than the lanky second-grader she has become, sitting on my lap in a meeting with my mission president. She began to sing in the middle of the meeting. I was uncomfortable and tried to quiet her. From the pulpit, my president said, “Let her sing. She will not always be a child.” And in my bed I begin to weep at the memory of that and the truthfulness of it, and I am tempted to rush into her room and scoop her into my arms and tell her that I love her, I love her, and I always will. But then she would stop singing. So I just close my eyes and watch the song spiral around the room, joining the whir of the ceiling fan, weaving itself into darkness, into my dreams, into my happy old father’s heart.