Heartbeat and Rosebuds

Before my father passed from my visibility, he asked me to be brave and promise that I would one day share my writing with the world. This Father’s Day marks two years since he left us. So in his memory, over the next three days I will be sharing the final three chapters of the memoir I wrote for him, one chapter each day. I offer them now as a gift—for fathers, for children, and for anyone who has loved and lost and is still listening for the heartbeat.

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FALL

Chapter 29

Heartbeat and Rosebuds

In the confluence where all love flows, I discovered the first seed my father planted—not through words or lessons, but through presence itself.

This was the foundation beneath all foundations:

the rhythm of safety,

the heartbeat of trust,

the sound before words that would shape everything that followed.

When I was a baby, I was a terrible sleeper.

My father loved it.

He said it was because he had me all to himself.

In the quiet hours before dawn, he would wake before I did and sit beside my bassinet, listening for the faintest stir. The moment I made a sound, he’d scoop me up eagerly—not groggy or begrudging, but delighted—so he could change me himself.

Then he’d carry me back to their bed, lay me on his chest, and rest my tiny head right above his heart.

There, he would whisper stories.

Of how precious I was.

Of how happy he was that we were both such poor sleepers.

Of how this sacred time belonged only to us.

With his steady heartbeat beneath my cheek and his voice humming just above it, my breathing would begin to settle. But he would force himself to stay awake—not wanting to miss a single moment of holding me close.

Sometimes my mother would stir and scold him gently, telling him I’d never learn to sleep if he kept spoiling me like this.

He would smile and say, “Look how tiny she is. Her breath is like rosebuds in bloom. She’ll grow up too soon as it is. Let be.”

And then he would go on spinning tales of wonder, speaking softly into my spirit when all I knew was felt.

To this day, I cannot fall asleep without a story being read aloud… and the sound of a heartbeat near.

As I grew into a toddler, these rituals had to shift. My father was at work during the day, and my mother struggled to get me to nap. But one day, she found me sprawled across our large white Labrador, Logger, like a tiny rider on a gentle horse. I had climbed up and stretched myself along his broad spine, using him as my living bed. Logger paced slowly—patiently—back and forth across the room, carrying me while I slept, my little hand reaching down along his side to rest against his steady heartbeat.

My mother was so moved by this scene that she photographed it—showing Logger’s patient devotion as he served as my walking, breathing cradle.

Somehow, I had found the rhythm again.

I had found the story.

I had found the heartbeat.

And I slept.

Reflection

The Sound Before Words

We are shaped long before we are taught.

Before we know what love is, we feel it.

Before we understand story, we are written into one.

My father gave me more than comfort in the dark—he gave me the rhythm of safety, the heartbeat of trust.

In those wordless hours, a foundation was laid beneath memory, beneath language, beneath time.

The voice of a father, not demanding, but delighted.

Not training me, but treasuring me.

What a strange and beautiful thing it is, that the nervous system remembers what the mind forgets—and that a baby held to a chest in the night can grow into a woman who still searches for the sound of a story and the thrum of a heart to guide her to rest.

Sometimes the greatest truths are planted before we have words to receive them.

And sometimes the way a father holds a child is the first gospel she will ever hear.

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Thank you for reading.

This reflection is drawn from the closing chapters of my memoir, Seeds My Father Planted: The Garden He Cultivated In Me. If you’d like to read more, you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Seeds-My-Father-Planted-Cultivated-ebook/dp/B0FMKQ9ZKM

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© Gilda Wray. All rights reserved.