Happy Birthday, Dude

About 10 minutes before 1:12 a.m., my oldest son began crying in his sleep.

Ten minutes from his 9th birthday and he was certifiably sick.

Five minutes before that, I ran my fingers through his hair, kissed his forehead, marveling at how far he has come in the nine years since he was a little baby that I could almost hold in the palm of my hand.

He had had a big day planned at school this morning ...

An awards ceremony for making all A's. Little spherical rice-krispie treats with baseball threads that my wife made for all 24 kids in the class. His name announced over the speaker, proclaiming it his day because he was the only one in the school born on April Fool's Day.

But it wasn't to be.

He was too sick to go to school.

I was barely awake when I decided that I was staying home with him. And not just because it was a rainy day.

I can't tell you how much I wish I could re-live those first days when he was born -- when spring's first flashes of pink, violet and powder-blue blooms begin to emerge tree-lined streets between the hospital and home.

Just to hold him and move him effortlessly. To watch the slightest turn of his lip, a hint of a smile that proves baby's want to be happy. To watch him wake up crying for food, being fed and happy, and then crying before he went back to sleep.

And then doing it all over again the course of a few hours.

I didn't really have any idea what I was doing, nor could I see beyond what I expected fatherhood to be compared to letting it be what it was going to be.

I didn't necessarily handle it well. And I can't say I do now.

However ...

Today was the closest I've been to living that time again.

He woke up and played his Madden '09, then came to wake me up.

He laid in the bed with me.

I told him how I was going to take care of him like when he was a little baby home for the first time.

I described his routine back then. He laughed. I told him how we had to set him beside a window because he was jaundiced. I didn't actually say "jaundiced." I said it was because his skin was weird and the sun would fix it.

I told him how he would squeak when he had the hiccups. I did an impression of that. He giggled.

I told him we would lay on the couch, him resting on my chest, and watch the Final Four

I gave him his medicine and cooked him eggs and sausage. He ate the sausage. The eggs weren't that good.

I ordered him the "Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa" movie on pay per view. It could play all day.

He asked me to play his WWE wrestling video game. I asked him to let me sleep for an hour. He came in frequently to wake me up for various reasons. I woke up and asked him if he was ready to play. He was asleep.

I opened up his little tin baby capsule. There was a lock of hair from his first haircut. A copy of the hospital's discharge paper on April 2, 2000. A ticket stub to his first Gamecock football -- September 21, 2002 vs. Temple.

When he woke up this afternoon, I asked him if he was ready. He told me he was, but that he wanted to watch the "Suite Life of Zach and Cody" first.

Of course he could.

Last night, I took the remnants of the Rice Krispy cutouts and molded them into a crude resemblance of circle. My wife painted some baseball threads on it but insisted that the mutated monstrosity wasn't going to school.

This morning, I put nine candles in that concoction and had him make a wish and blow them out.

Over the course of the day, he ate the whole thing ... one foot in diameter.

We played the wrestling game. I was Shelton Benjamin. He was Shawn Michaels. He won, because he's better. I let him download whatever music he wanted.

We picked his brother up from school. I let him sit in the front this time, because it was his birthday.

We went to a Walgreen's to pick out some sunglasses for baseball. I had promised we would do that. His eyes are sensitive like mine. While inside, he found a wrestling figure by the name of "MVP." It was $9.99. I bought it, because it's his birthday.

He came home and acted out a match with his new figure. And watched the Madagascar movie again.

Like a little kid who didn't just two days before -- as his team's starting pitcher for their first game of the season -- work his way out of bases-loaded jam and strike out one of the best hitters in his league.

That's where he is now.

On an edge between the babyhood I don't want to vanish and the growing kid who sometimes lapses and involuntarily calls me "dude" if I'm frustrating him.

"Dude."

He's embarrassed when I bring up that habit.

These years go by.

It's getting to where one day isn't enough to contain them.