MY HEART RACED

Dear Spike:

When I was a little boy, I suffered from a condition known as night terrors.

The problem is common with children. Just the other day, my good friend Matt and I shared our childhood war stories. His dreams got so bad that his mom took him to the doctor for medication. Mine were so bad that my mom, convinced that I was possessed, started searching the yellow pages for an exorcist.

Everyone has bad dreams, but those described as terrors usually are limited to children between the ages of 2 and 6.

Very occasionally, though, I still will have a dream that causes me to bolt upright in my bed, sweating and screaming.

I might have had one just last night, in fact.

Here's all I really remember: A loud 'thump' in the middle of the night — and a flash to your tiny body, lying on the ground outside our bedroom window.

When I shot up out of the bed, screaming, I could see that our window drapes were stirring in the early morning breeze. Before I could rush to the window, you're mother put her hand on my back.

"It's alright," she said. "Everything is alright."

I turned to see her, lying in bed with your little head nestled up against her shoulder.

I sighed.

But my heart raced on.

I've been scared before, lots of times. When I was a boy, maybe 9 or 10 years old, I couldn't find my little brother for a period of several hours after school (he'd gone to a friend's house without telling me.) When I was a young man, maybe 19 or 20, I lost control of my car on a narrow mountain road (the passenger-side wheels went off the edge of the cliffside, but fortunately the car stayed on the road.) And when I was in Iraq, a few years ago, I dove under the relative safety of an un-armored Humvee as rockets crashed down all around (two men died that day, but I walked away unscathed.)

But nothing — absolutely nothing — scares me like the thought of losing you.

It took quite a while to get back to sleep, last night. And even when I did, it was a restless slumber. When I awoke, this morning, my heart was still pounding in my chest.

There's a great risk, we take, when we fall in love, for it is all too easy for a child to get lost, for a car to go off the road, or for any of a number of life's many paths to lead us into uncertainty, danger and death.

But there's a great reward that comes along with these risks, as well, for it is our worry and our fear and our terrors that illuminate our love.

And when my heart pounds, it pounds for you.

Love,
dad