Before There Was A Name
It was time for spring cleaning. Shoving the glass windowpane up, the curtains billowed out as cool air rushed into our bedroom. I could almost smell the bluebonnets in the field beyond our little cabin, and my fingers itched to get back into the soil after the long winter months. But today, we were cleaning out closets.
My longleaf pine bed, hand-built by my brothers and friends, was stacked high with winter coats, sweaters, and turtlenecks waiting to be packed away for the season. I slipped a CD into the computer for company as I worked. The instrumentals kept my hands moving in rhythm.
Christopher, now fourteen months old, toddled around the floor, climbing into bins as I filled them, burrowing among folded clothes bound for the shed. As the afternoon wore on, I glanced at the clock. Ah. Time to get dinner started.
I scrambled into the kitchen, browned meat in a pan, then hurried back to clear the bed before evening settled in. The scent of cooking followed me down the hall.
Then I heard the squeak of the office chair. Peeking around the corner, I saw that Christopher had climbed onto the chair at my desk. He sat upright, gently rocking as the chair swiveled back and forth, his eyes fixed on the wall. I stopped and stared, as if seized by my collar.
An instrumental version of My Heart Will Go On drifted from the speakers—the same CD I’d put in earlier. Christopher swayed to the music, but it was his face that held me. His big brown eyes were fixed on something I could not see. And most astonishing, tears streamed down his cheeks.
He wasn’t exactly crying. He made no sound, but seemed peaceful, even content, yet those tears traced steady paths down his face, the way they do on an older man moved by something deep and wordless.
I had felt that kind of emotion before, holding a newborn, hearing a piece of music that reached straight through me, embracing someone long gone. But never had I seen it in a child, certainly never in an infant.
I stood frozen in the doorway, holding my breath without realizing it, afraid that even breathing might interrupt whatever was happening. After a moment, I slipped quietly away and found my husband, Dan.
“Come here, Honey,” I whispered. “You have to see this.”
We stood together and watched him. Christopher never noticed us. I felt as though I were looking at a prophet or an angel. Goosebumps raced up my arms. I had never seen anything like this. When the song ended, he lingered a moment longer, then climbed down from the chair and went on with his day, making messes, crawling under furniture, climbing into boxes. He was, once again, my fourteen-month-old baby.
And yet…What was so different about him? He had rolled early, crawled early, walked when he was barely a year old. Nothing about him raised alarms. The only thing I couldn’t get him to do, something my other children had done without effort, was raise one finger and say he was one on his first birthday. And now that I thought about it, he never waved…never clapped. But otherwise… he was normal. Right?
So what was this presence around him—this thing I could sense but not name? It didn’t feel like a shadow or a warning. It felt more like the distant roar of the sea. Or an echo in the mountains.
Who was this child?
