“Do your best to not grow up. Never get older.” — Trip, last night, at bedtime
He said it like it was obvious. Like the most natural thing in the world to say to your mom before she turned out the light. “Mom, I never want to let you die. Do your best to not grow up. Never get older.” He said it, and then he looked at me. The way he does when he’s waiting to make sure the thing he said landed. Waiting for me to respond. Not just a nod. Not just mm-hmm, okay, goodnight. He held on until I said the words. He made sure I promised.
I stumbled. Just for a second. There’s a flash that happens sometimes, I don’t always see it coming, where I think about how many times the answer could have gone differently. That day in May 2019 when my brain began to bleed. The surgeries. The years of not fully trusting my own body anymore because I had learned, pretty clearly, that I was right not to.
And then the part that’s harder to say out loud. After he was born, I was so deep in postpartum depression that I wasn’t scared of dying. I was thinking about it. Fear means you want to live. What I had was quieter than that. Just weight, and the thought that maybe I didn’t have to keep carrying it.
He doesn’t know any of that. He’s five. He knows his mom tucks him in and has dance parties with him and always catches him when he comes barreling in for a running hug. He knows she got sick once, because he’s heard that, he was there for some of it. He doesn’t know what sick meant. He doesn’t know how many rooms I had to walk through to get back to him.
He just loves me. He doesn’t want to lose me. This one night at bedtime that needed to turn into words, so it did.
“Do your best to not grow up. Never get older.” He wasn’t asking me to promise I’d never get sick again, or that nothing bad would happen, or that I had any of it figured out. He just wanted me to try. He just wanted to hear me say it. So I said it.
I didn’t close his door right away. I stood with my hand on the handle, door half open, watching him wrestle around in the covers while he settled himself to fall asleep.
There’s a version of my life where I’m not standing there. Where he grew up with a different kind of story, one that ended too soon. That people have to explain to him carefully, that leaves a shape in the room where I was supposed to be. I know that version exists. I know how close it came to being the one we got.
And I think about him at five years old, whispering to me in the dark, because he loves me so much it had to go somewhere. Had to turn into a wish. Had to turn into a promise he made me make out loud.
He has no idea he’s been holding me to that unspoken promise since he got here.
I closed the door, but left that crack so the light could seep in to comfort him.
Do your best, he said. Promise me. I promised.