An Odd Way to Say I Love You

There are some things you can predict and expect when you sign up for parenthood. Long nights come to mind, so do moments of tearful pride and loads of spilled milk.

But then there are things that unfold in parenthood, and you look at these things and you’re like, “How in the world did this happen? What, exactly, am I doing?”

Not long ago, I decided to start a ritual with my six-year-old son—a simple bedtime practice that would provide a tiny bit of extra male bonding between us. Let me stress that I wanted it to be simple.

Tucking him in to bed, I said, “This will be our secret manly way of saying we love each other.” I pounded my chest twice and pointed at him, like baseball players do after they hit a home run and they want to tell the sky above they love it. My son did the chest-pounding point back to me. There. We had a simple ritual.

Within a day or two, word had gotten out. His mother knew about our “secret” bedtime ritual, and she and the boy were doing their own chest-pounding thing. And the boy’s nine-year-old sister wanted to know what her special bedtime ritual would be.

Next thing I knew, improved bedtime rituals were being devised by both my son and daughter. The rituals were becoming more complex. It wasn’t enough to say, “I love you” the way baseball players say they love the sky; we needed more action.

These days, the bedtime rituals with my kids are downright complicated. I cannot communicate these rituals to the reader because part of what makes them special is that they are secret—my son doesn’t know the ritual I share with my daughter, and my daughter doesn’t know the ritual I share with my son. And I don’t know the ritual my son’s mother shares with him, nor do I know the ritual she and my daughter share. Nor do the children know the rituals the other shares with their mother.