Sometimes, I awaken in the midst of the night, and thoughts of him roll through my rearing consciousness. With the unassuming innocence of floating cloud mist, it takes me over and wraps me in its airy density, soothing me with coolness yet heating me with longing. It is strange to think that he’d been near me all along, for years a silent presence whom I had barely acknowledged, so consumed was I in my personal hell at the time. I want to make him feel as loved and appreciated as he makes me feel, but I’m not sure I know how. What if it’s not in me? And then the usual guilt brings with it the familiar discomfort.

As always, he senses me, and appears as if from nowhere, as if reading my emotions. I run my hand over his soft fur, and he lifts his little wet nose and tilts it into my fingertips. “It’s okay, mommy, I love you, and I will always forgive you for neglecting me,” his purring seems to suggest. My baby boy. My poor fuzzy baby who waits and meows for me by the door on nights I don’t come home. Who understands when I’ve neglected him, taken away the days when he’d sleep curled in the crook of my elbow on my bed, then taken away his permission to even enter my bedroom. He visits me in dreams and talks to me, sometimes cries to me.

Ugh. I’m gonna go curl up around him on the living room floor right after I shower.