Verily, I Say Thee Goodnight!

Today's guest blogger is my father, Bill Sweeney.

All of my kids were different. My oldest, Shannon, needed to be held and sung to. I remember summers camping when she was a baby. I would walk around in the field near Goose Bay with her slung over my shoulders as the rest of the family wondered why they were being treated to Christmas Carrols in July. They were easy song lyrics to remember and seemed more soothing to my daughter than an AC/DC melody.

My son Sean needed to eat yogurt as a toddler through the bars of the crib -- a veritable condemned felon getting his last meal. After the meal, I would cradle his head with one hand, and stroke his hair with the other until he fell asleep sitting up. Maneuvering his pudgy little legs, as well as my two arms through the bars of the crib to lay him down without waking him up was a feat that even Houdini would have respected.

My third child, Devin, was easy. He fell asleep on the couch often and sometimes slept there until morning. I’ll always love him for that.

The there was the baby, Bryan, now 13 years old. As Dickens would say: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” He had horrible colic and only slept through the night twice in the first two years of his life – a life that only God spared from the many times I felt like tossing him off our upstairs balcony as he screamed and would not fall asleep. And speaking of God, I know it sounds blasphemous, but it takes two gods to put him to bed now.

Bryan and I have bonded over comic books. He’s fascinated with my extensive collection of The Might Thor, the Norse god of thunder. He knows the mythology, pronounces Thor’s hammer mjolnir (pronounced me-yawl-ner) flawlessly, and always begs for me to read him more than one comic each night. After a dramatic reading where Thor battles his evil brother Loki, the flame demon Surter, or even the awesome menace of the dreaded Celestials, we turn the light off and snuggle cozily in his (actually my daughter Shannon’s) bed. Then we say night prayers and both pray and ask God to watch over our family and those close to us…and it’s funny how a calming and centering moment for your children actually becomes one for you as an adult too.