Willow was a sleeper. For the first three months of his life, nobody saw much of him really, other than Sal, on whom and with whom he slept. He woke every two or three hours for a quick feed of course, but there was barely time for a swift change of nappy before he was back in the sling (daytime) or bed (nighttime) nodding off again.
I was enjoying the school holidays, chasing round the garden after fourteen-month-old Luna; ducking under the washing line sagging with soggy nappies – a full line of them every day now (how would we manage two children in cloth nappies through the winter?). ‘Boh!’ Luna would shout, spotting the football – a Brazil 2014 ball, complete with Armadillo mascot pictured on it. England had already been eliminated and our cheap ball didn’t bounce straight, but our little footballer wasn’t bothered and she tottered across the mossy lawn giving it little left-foot taps every so often. And Willow slept on.
‘Car’ was another of Luna’s favourite words. ‘Car, car!’ She’d exclaim excitedly as one went past. And another and another. She didn’t differentiate between vehicles – they were all ‘cars’ from motorised wheelchairs circling the pond in the park to articulated lorries hurtling down the M62. ‘Car, car!’ I walked through a car park with her one day and she labelled every single motor we passed in the same tone of surprise and joy: ‘car!’.
And Willow – well, Willow slept on. One day I would get to know this little boy who didn’t feed from me, didn’t sleep with me, didn’t come from my body, but who was my son. My Son, the sleeper.