June 2025

Will used to sing Unforgettable by Nat King Cole to Mia when she was little and couldn’t sleep. There was this one night, winter scratching at the windows like an old cat, and Mia fussing in his arms, her eyes too bright for sleep. He was tired, so very tired, but he walked the narrow rooms with her clutched to his chest, the lamplight low and wavering in the corners, his voice soft and a little hoarse from the cold that was creeping into his bones.

He had to be up early…work waited, indifferent to his sleepless nights and the small weight of her in his arms. But he kept moving, kept singing in a voice that was more breath than melody. His head felt hot, and he knew he was getting sick, the fever a slow ache behind his eyes, but he never let her see that. He only brushed his lips against her soft hair, murmured nonsense in a low hush, and tried to let his warmth fill the cold that lay in every corner of the house.

The floorboards creaked under his slow steps, and the hush of the snow outside seemed to fold around them, wrapping them in a cocoon of winter stillness. He would pause every so often, pressing her closer, feeling the soft weight of her against his chest, and then start moving again, the song still on his lips. There was something beautiful in that, his exhaustion, his tenderness, the quiet vow he kept weaving with every note, every step in that cold, quiet house.

Well, there were those first few months after Mia was born that were pure hell, no other way to put it. Newborns are fragile things, all skin and milk and feverish crying, and Mia seemed to catch every little cold that drifted through the winter air. Will was terrified. He lived in a constant state of watchfulness, ears tuned to her breathing even in the rare moments she slept. He swore he could hear the catch in her breath from across the room.

Then there was the matter of taking her to work. He never wanted to leave her with anyone else, couldn’t bring himself to trust anyone with her tiny, drowsy weight. Mia, for her part, refused to go to anyone else anyway. So he’d carry her, bundled in soft layers, to whatever job he had lined up (he had to take a leave from the field work ofc so he was fixing up things at that time), working with one hand and cradling her with the other, always half-aware of the warmth of her head on his chest.

The worst, though, was when he would fall sick himself, those fevers that turned his body to lead, the bone-deep aches that would have laid him out if he’d had the luxury. But he didn’t. He still had to cook for her, bathe her, change her and soothe her to sleep. He did it all because he couldn’t bear the thought of her needing something and him not being there to give it.

She was a good kid, though, always was. So quiet, so strangely attuned to the hush of things. When he was sick, she wouldn’t ask for anything. As she grew, she learned to reach the cabinets on her own. She’d pour herself a bowl of cereal and eat it without complaint, never asking for more than he could give. It was something he held on to, that quiet understanding of hers, that gentleness. It’s what got him through those nights when the fever burned and the world outside was nothing but wind and ice.