Sunday is a very important day. No, not the Superbowl. No, not Groundhog Day. Sunday would have been Baldur's 8th Gotcha Day.
Of course, our boy is not here today . I won't go into that more now (though if you aren't aware of what happened, here are my posts on that: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/2/24/baldurs-saga, https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/3/9/baldurs-battle, https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/6/9/great-baldurs-ghost )
Although... I say he's not here with us, but sometimes we wonder.
When we set up the nursery, we used the room that had been the guest room. Baldur used to love curling up on the guest room bed. (We didn't do anything to set up the nursery while he was still sick - we didn't want to upset his world.) We found a little plush corgi that looks a bit like our boy and put him on a shelf overlooking the crib. It's a place of honor, and place where he can keep an eye on his baby sister. And the thing is... we think he does.
The shelf is over the recliner where we feed Elianna at bedtime. We have a little night light in the room and it casts its gentle glow up toward that shelf, making the shadow of the little corgi plushie look a little taller, a little sleeker - just like our corgi/shepherd mix.
A few months ago - just before Halloween, in fact - Elianna had just started making little baby chatty noises. One night when Jason was putting her to bed, he noticed that she wasn't looking at him as he held her. She was looking up past his shoulder, up past the top of the recliner, up to the corgi on the shelf, happily chatting away at it.
We have other stuffed animals on shelves around the nursery. Elianna never focuses on them or chats at them. She's never done this when I put her to bed. (I loved Baldur, and he loved me, but really he was his Daddy's boy.)
Baldur never got to meet his baby sister. One of my last memories of him, shortly before I could definitely tell that the little flutters I was feeling was Elianna starting to kick, was my sweet boy curling up next to me on the couch with his soft ears pressed to my tummy. Baldur usually didn't curl up with me - like I said, he was his Daddy's boy. But I think he knew - could either feel or hear - that his little sister was in there.
So it was a little weird at first - weird but touching. And then a couple months passed and Elianna seemed to stop telling Baldur about her day. And we thought, "well I guess that's that." (Many cultures believe that the veil between worlds is thinnest near Halloween. Given that she started doing this in late October and hasn't done it in maybe a month or so, I thought maybe that veil is getting too thick again.) But then last Friday, something else happened, involving Baldur's other little sister.
Athena has always been a noisy sleeper - snoring, snorting, and grunting. But she never really makes vocalizations - never barks or whimpers while sleeping. Baldur, on the other hand, frequently "talked" in his sleep. He made a little whooping noise - "vwoop-vwoop! Vwoop-vwoop!"
Last Friday night - Jason's birthday - Athena was curled up under the blanket on the couch. Suddenly, from under the blanket, we heard "Vwoop-vwoop! Vwoop-vwoop!" - a noise Athena has never made before. Had our boy come to visit again, to say "hi" to his daddy on his birthday?
I don't know if we'll have another visit from our boy. But I tell you what, if I see Baldur's shadow on Groundhog Day, on his Gotcha Day, I'm going to take it as a good sign.
Listening for his baby sister.
Someone to watch over me.