I think I was about 4 when it happened. People tell me that it must have been a big shock at such a young age, but I’m not sure I really noticed it like that. The only reason that I remember it at all is that one night my mother came and slept in my bed with me. She pulled me up against her, and I could feel her body shaking and hot tears in my hair. She never said a word to me, though, and I must have fallen asleep shortly afterward.
The next night she scooped me up and took me to her bed. I always slept there from that point on. It was a lot bigger than my bed, but I felt a lot more cramped. I would wake up in the night, uncomfortable from her weight pressing against me, and scoot away from her, being careful not to wake her, then fall back asleep only to wake up hours later to find her holding me again. I often found myself sleeping on the edge of the bed, on the verge of falling onto the floor, but with her arm wrapped around me, holding me in place.
Everything else was pretty much normal, though. Our days went by much the same as always, only my mother seemed a lot more solemn. She laughed less often, and I’d often find her staring into space or lying on the couch for hours at a time, napping fitfully. Little things like that. Nothing major, nothing that would leave a mark on the life of a four-year-old boy.
I asked one day when daddy was coming home. She turned her face away, staring out the window for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to answer. And then she said, so quietly I almost missed it, “I don’t know,” and turned back to me with moist eyes and a hesitant smile on her lips. That was all we ever spoke of it.