My midnight father

When I was little, I had terrible ear aches.  For two years, throbbing pain.  Like a demon heart crawled into my ears to thump thump thump. And I would cry.  Even then, I wasn't one of those girls.  I would fall, scrape my knee and laugh.  I would break my wrist and finish the game, then play three more.  So when I cried, my parents knew.  There was a lot they didn't know then.  That they don't know now.  Demon hearts crawling into my head, they knew about but my older brother crawling into my bed, they did not.  My ears hurt mostly at night.  It kept me from sleeping.  My parent's room was below mine and my Dad would hear me crying.  He would come in, scoop me up, give me my medicine and then rock me to sleep.  He would rock me gently and tell me stories.  My head pressed to his chest, tears and pain still wracking my five year old body.  And he just held me and told me the stories that made up of his life.  Gently rocking, gently talking.  The low timber of his voice moving around the pain.  The medicine did nothing for my ears, it was essentially codeine, but it would, eventually put me to sleep.  My father would wrap me up with love.  And for those precious moments I would just be a little girl in my dad's arms.  Not a little girl with secrets or fucked up ears.  No demons in my head or in my bed. Just safe, and loved.  My dad doesn't know this now.  Now, he doesn't really know anything.  His brain has deteriorated to the point that his loved ones are his enemies in a war he never served in.  I did tell him.  I did.  I told him before all this, before Lewy Body's ate his ability to remember that pee goes in toilets not in shoes.  I told him this, my purest memory of me & my dad.  And how much it meant to me then.  And how much it means to me right now.  Now as I rock my own self to sleep.  The nights when demons crawl into my head and whisper.  My ears are good now.  I even make a living with them.  My parents finally jumped through every hoop their insurance threw at them and got me to a specialist who cured me with a balloon, a cup of water, and a squirt of air.  Turns out the only dainty part of my body is my cute little inner ear but like every other part of me, it's different and doesn't function the way everyone else's does.  The specialist taught me how to prevent the pain from ever happening again.  And even then, after I was cured of one demon.  I could still wake my dad in the middle of the night after nightmares or sickness or just needing him.  Needing to hear his voice and his stories.  Needing to just be that little girl with no secrets. There is so much about him, things I never wanted to be like.  Now as I struggle to learn how to dance I blame part of it on the genetics of my father.  But this, this gift he gave me.  I love.  I cherish.  And I hope above all things that I can greet my loved ones when they are in pain and bring them comfort and peace, to bring them a moment where they too can just be.