I’ll start with the bad part so I can get to the good. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, The Kid did that thing where he wakes up at an unscheduled time and starts crying. My very scheduled mind still resists this interruption, violently. The Husband went to check on him, and I heard soothing noises float from the nursery to my steaming ears. Guilt set in, because I knew I was being an ass and I didn’t want to be but even among the All-Stars there was that stuff about doing what you didn’t want and not doing what you did. I realized, there beneath the too-comfortable covers, that I was a party of one and all my people were a few feet away, so I hurled myself out of bed and met up with them. Our little 2 am baby was in TH’s arms, wide-eyed and ridiculously cute for such an awful hour–an hour when the clubs are closing in Manhattan and I used to be there, spilling out and hailing a cab–and I said it as the culprit of the cries revealed itself in TK’s snotty wheezing: “Well now I feel like shit.”

We put him back to bed a few minutes later and as we drifted off ourselves, I whispered to TH, “I feel like Harry Potter. Every time he cries, my C-section scar hurts.” TH laughed and asked how long I’d been waiting to use that one; I protested that I’d just come up with it; we went to sleep. I realized that within my comparison, TK would be Voldemort, and that at 2 am I was okay with that. But not before I remembered what Tim Keller had pointed out and what I had read, what Dumbledore had told Harry: “…do you know why…Professor Quirrell couldn’t bear to have you touch him?…It was because of your mother. She sacrificed herself for you. And that kind of act leaves a mark…It lives in your very skin...Love, Harry. Love.”

There is the love that allowed me to be opened up and sewed back together–an earthly love that I’d like to see perfected, especially at 2 in the morning; then there is the love that makes all other love possible, the love that was inalterably scarred, the love that promises redemption of even my foulest moods.

TK’s cold persisted, but the weekend improved. The Mom and Dad were in town to keep The Niece for the weekend, and we dropped TK off with them late Saturday afternoon, in keeping with our agenda: Date Night. The four hours ahead of us were not the longest time I’d spent away from him, but it still felt momentous to leave him for a feeding so that we could have a fancy dinner and see a movie. TH and I waltzed into the bistro at 5:30 pm, a horrifyingly early hour that was reinforced by the only other patrons there being a senior couple at a nearby table. I ordered a martini, my first in over a year, and we remembered what it was like to have dinner atop a white tablecloth with a soundtrack of conversation about things other than poop quality. Then we saw The Hunger Games and it almost felt like we were normal people again, people who stroll around in a relaxed state and eat popcorn and peanut M&Ms and talk about politics and cinematography and how consistently awesome Donald Sutherland is. Then I looked at my watch, and it was 9 pm, and I looked at TH and he knew to step on it. And we shared the thought out loud, the new reality that we face: we will never be those people again. We will never be undistracted, or in one place, not when he isn’t there with us.

It reminded me of how I felt every time I flew between home and New York City, how torn I felt whenever I saw the green hills or angular buildings approaching and receding in the plane window. A heart divided.

Or maybe just a heart spread out. Because yesterday, TH brought TK and his swing into the sunroom and I read a travel magazine on the couch as our son slurped on his thumb and slept beside me. TH played basketball outside the window, each shot punctuated with a thump, the rhythm of grace, of all of us in one place, cradling me and reminding me of how much bigger love is than I ever knew.