Leap Year Day

I went to the counselor yesterday. Alone.

Brenda went on Monday, was asked to return next Monday. The following Thursday will be the two of us, but yesterday it was just me. Just this new counselor could hear my story.

I took a Xanax on the way. I was anxious and I didn't want to get too emotional about the mess we are in.

It started off easy enough. She let me talk about whatever I wanted. I started with my position on our marriage. My desire to preserve our marriage, if it is possible. My resolve to end it if it becomes clear that it cannot be saved.

When those issues were covered well enough she started the probing questions, and songs from an album I listen to (Turbulent Indigo by Joni Mitchell) when I am feel a little sad started playing in my head.


I spoke about my faith. I spoke about how central it is to my life.

I spoke about my dreams, how I remember them very clearly. I told how my dreams come in four types:

There are the ones that are simply flotsam and jetsam from my life, dreams that are simply working through the events of my life, sorting them out.

I described the ones from my subconscious, the ones that are a part of me trying to tell me about myself.

I shared of the rare dreams I have, especially when I was younger, which I could guide, the ones I knew were dreams while I was having them and could do things voluntarily, make myself fly, walk through walls, do things I simply wanted to try.

And I told her about the very rare ones that are completely different. The ones where God speaks to me.

She asked me to talk about Willy, about the death of the infant in my care at 10:30 a.m. December 15, 1992. I gave her the background about my dreams to explain how I was told to adopt that child.

In a voice that thickened, trembled, I spoke about the dream.

There was darkness and a growing pool of light. In it was an empty treasure chest. The sort you see in pirate movies. I watched it fill with gold. Right to the top it filled with gold coins. And when it was full, paper currency floated down and covered all the gold. The dream ended.

I explained to her that I had prayed the night before for an answer to the question of whether or not we should adopt Willy. There was a teen girl who would give us that child the day he was born. It would be the next morning that we would see a lawyer about it, begin spending money we didn’t have, to make the child soon to be born our own.

I explained to her that some would see that as a simple dream, but there were things about it that made it different.

First, it had a quality about it that was far different than other dreams. There was a focus to it, a sense of importance, that made it a powerful vision, of communication. It was a clear message. And there was a sound, sort of. It was sort of orchestral/choirish sort of sound, but without clear notes, without clear words, almost a sound that could be felt. The darkness surrounding the dream seemed to thrum with presence, almost clear singing, that said LIFE, LOVE, POWER, HOPE, GLORY. And lastly, when I awoke there was a clear interpretation of the dream in my mind.

The emptiness of our lives, the lack of the children we wanted so badly, would be given to us. The treasure we hoped for would fill us up. And as for our concern about paying for it, our worries about all the bills, would not be an issue. It would all be covered.

I explained to her that my faith is a very large part of my life, and that I have had many experiences which, for me, speak to the reality of God, though they would not be evidence for someone else.

I had sidestepped the real discussion about Willy’s death.

She drove straight at it.

“Tell me about Willy’s death.”

My throat tightened, my heart rate went up.

“That was bad,” I said in a choked whisper.

A line came to mind from one of the songs of that album...

...Six hundred thousand doctors
Are putting on rubber gloves
And they're poking
At the miseries made of love...
“Not to Blame”

I answered her. I talked about taking that three and a half month old child in his car seat to cut down a Christmas tree. About laying him on his tummy to give him a chance to push and kick with his arms and legs, a step toward learning to crawl. How I knew that he was mad, he wanted me to rock him in my arms, the way I always let him fall asleep. I worried about having him fall asleep on his stomach because there is supposedly an increased risk of S.I.D.S. in sleeping that way (but I told myself I would turn him as soon as he fell asleep, that first sleep without the rocking of parental arms.). I talked about the diminshing progression of his complaints, his angry crying, and his sobbing, and his whimpering, and his quiet, sad moaning for me, and his silence as he drifted off to sleep, drifted off into eternity.

I spoke of how I waited a few minutes and went to check on him... finding him blue.

I spoke of my panic. Of calling 911. Of thumping on his little chest with my finger tips, of gently blowing into his mouth, of standing at the end of the drive waiting for help to arrive, of seeing the flashing red and blue lights, hearing the siren, completely freaking out because though the ambulance appeared to be flying to my rescue, our rescue, it seemed to just hang in the distance without moving.

I spoke to her about my love for my child and how the following year was an awful year that had my heart beating in my chest like some razor sharp spiky thing tearing me apart. I spoke about seeing him naked on a metal table at the hospital. I spoke about the horror of looking at tiny caskets waiting for people like me to place tiny bodies in. I spoke about clutching my son at the funeral home, smudging the makeup that made him appear warm, alive. I spoke about landing on my chest in the dirt, in my good clothes, so I could reach far down into that hole in the earth to put that simple box with my treasure where he would rest until judgment day.

Another part of another song from that same album came to mind...

...What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread
and everything I fear come true?...
“Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song)”

After that painful exposition of the most dreadful moments of my life we went on to the most recent and the more distant moments of my life that have damaged, yet strengthened me. The dangers my father placed me in. The unfaithfulness of those I trust.

I shared how imperfect I am. How miserable the world can be, and how unfair... but how I love it and those in it.

Another song from that album came to mind... about young girls working hard in laundries in convents because they were “wayward” girls, and how their suffering was compounded by those who should have loved them, showed them mercy, helped them from the hurts they had suffered from men...


...I was an unmarried girl
I'd just turned twenty-seven
When they sent me to the sisters
For the way men looked at me
Branded as a jezebel
I knew I was not bound for Heaven
I'd be cast in shame
Into the Magdalene laundries...

...These bloodless brides of Jesus
If they had just once glimpsed their groom
Concealed behind their rosaries

Then they'd know,
and they'd drop the stones
They wilt the grass they walk upon
They leech the light out of a room
They'd like to drive us down the drain
At the Magdalene laundries...
“The Magdalene Laundries”


So, I spilled out the things which hurt, as well as the hopes for my future. I spoke of my strengths and gifts. I talked about my weaknesses and failures, as well as my determination to divorce this woman I love if one of two things occur:

1. She continues contact with this other man.
2. Or I become convinced that there is no saving our marriage.

Our time came to an end.

I drove home.

I picked up a bouquet of tulips, and a card for Brenda. Tomorrow I will have known Brenda 28 years. I met her on Leap Year Day 1980.

So... I go back to work... anxious about my life though my Lord tells me not to be. I think about the life we have had, nearly three decades. I think about how loyal I am to those I love. That I love my children and regardless of what they may do, regardless of what kind of burden they may be in the future. That I want to restore my wife, to build her up, to help her love herself, help her to love those who love her.

I have many flaws. I have many weaknesses. But...

I am not the man my wife complains about, the one of a quarter century ago.

I am not responsible for her happiness. I am not responsible for her actions or her thoughts or her self esteem. I want to fix those things, but they are not my responsibilities.

So... it is Leap Year Day... an extra day slipped into every fourth year to keep our poor man-made calendar in step with the God-made lap our little world makes as it races around the sun.

I’ve made 28 of those laps with her. I will run the next one as best I can. Perhaps she will be there still when it makes its circuit once more.