The Last Thing I Do
The last thing I do before leaving Charlotte’s room at night is sing to her.
There are two songs.
The first is a slightly modified
version of “We Love You, Conrad” from Bye Bye Birdie. Conrad gets replaced by whoever Charlotte has decided to be that day. A princess, usually. Some other character occasionally. The identity changes. The song survives.
Then I sing “You Are My Sunshine.”
And, then I leave.
These songs have been part of her bedtime for almost as long as she has had one. When she was still a baby, she would sit on my lap while I rolled around her room in my chair, circling it what felt like a thousand times while I sang to her. The room has changed. She has changed. I have changed. But, somehow, the songs are still here.
This is a very small ritual. I am not trying to turn it into evidence that I am a particularly good father. Mostly, I want to record it because I have learned to pay attention to these things while they are still happening.
Speaking is very hard for me now. Singing is harder. By bedtime, after an entire day of using a body that has usually already exhausted most of what it has to give, it can be especially difficult.
Charlotte knows that. Or, at least, she knows my voice as it is. I have written before about how she can still hear me through the difficulty, without seeming especially bothered by the distance between the sound I intend and the sound that actually comes out.
So, I sing.
I sing to whichever member of her rotating cast of princesses and characters has shown up that night. Then I sing the other song, the one that does not need modification.
It is for her.
But, there is something I have noticed lately.
Even on days when I have felt terrible from beginning to end, I usually feel a little better when I leave her room.
Not fixed. Not suddenly well. The singing does not cancel anything that came before it.
It just changes the last few minutes of the day.
Maybe that is enough.
I sing two songs to my daughter.
She listens.
And, somehow, by the time I am finished, I have been given something too.
Goodnight Charlotte
We’ve done this from the start
Two songs
