Dylan Stafford

Happy Valentine’s Day. For Father’s Day 2025, I am publishing Daddy Muscles Too. This is an excerpt. Comments welcome.

Originally written February 23, 2014

“When you hug someone, lean to the right as you come together so that your hearts touch. Our hearts give out energy, and when we bring them together, we are more alive.”

That may not be the exact quote, but that’s how I remember it.

My friend Premod told me that. Premod is one of the people I most respect because of how he lives his life. He is one of those people who is present, who always has time for you. He is a “go slow to go fast” person and he is one of those guys who does the right thing, even when no one is watching.

This morning I went to church with my wife and the boys. Jackson went off to Sunday school and Marisa and I were in the service with Christian, our not-quite-two-year old.

Christian is a lot to handle during church. He’s almost 31 pounds now, blond and blue-eyed and a flirt. Usually the people in the row behind us miss a lot of the sermon because he’ll be making eyes and faces and be Gerber-baby-charming all through the service. Today, an older couple in the pew behind us moved away, annoyed and surrounded, by us in front of them and another family behind them. Can’t charm everybody…

I love having Christian with me in church. I hold him up extra high on my hip during the singing. I whisper in his ear during prayers to try to keep him quiet. We weaned him off his pacifier at the start of the month and he’s a lot noisier “unplugged” now.

As I held him during one hymn today, I felt wetness on my left arm where he sat. Somehow the new diaper that I’d put on him at home had already reached maximum density and started leaking. I walked him out the back and around to the parking garage and down the elevator and put a fresh diaper on him. We re-traced our steps and made it back in time for Communion.

The Communion procession started and as I stood, singing and rocking with him, he fell asleep on my shoulder. I went forward and received the host and genuflected and made it back to my seat, balancing him all the way. Normally, the up and down would wake him, but today he kept sleeping.

The service ended and people filed out and Marisa went off to be with our older son for the children’s service that follows the children’s Sunday school. We made a plan that I would stay put in the back corner of the sanctuary as long as Christian kept sleeping, or else go outside to the coffee and donuts if he woke up.

Christian slept almost forty-five minutes. He was face down on my chest the whole time. I don’t think he ever changed the cheek that was resting against me until he finally woke up, all rumpled looking and dazed, with slightly sweaty hair.

I had wedged myself into a corner pew for him to sleep, leaning up against the wall with my arms cradling his butt to keep him supported. The volunteers came by, collecting the song sheets and golf pencils that were left behind in the pews. Older women smiled and whispered “Oh-he’s-so-beautiful” at me. The high school volunteers, mostly boys, if they noticed at all, didn’t say anything.

More than once, I got a pain from the hard wood pews on my back and the almost-31-pound heater lying on my chest. I’d wiggle to change my position but also not wake him, but it was never actually comfortable.

I told myself to use the time as a meditation and I started to listen to his breathing. Then I started thinking about our older son, now almost seven years old, and how he is already both too big to fit on me and too wakeful to sleep anymore in the daytime.

It was this thought that got me present to the gift of this moment with Christian. And then the quote from Premod came to me too.

“Wow, my heart and Christian’s heart are right next to each other. For the last 40 minutes, our two hearts have been beating right against one another,” I realized.

“I wonder how that will help him grow. I wonder how many babies out there will go through their whole childhood without getting to be held, and loved, and have their heart beat next to another heart.”

I’m sure I’ll make many mistakes raising my sons. Making mistakes is clearly part of the parenting job description, “Trial and error, mostly error.”

But for today, for those 45 minutes, my heart was telling his heart:

You’re loved. You’re loved. You’re loved.

Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom.

Over and Over and Over again.

Just for today, that is enough.