Sleep is for the birds

At some hour last night, I heard a little cry from the next room over, then the quiet slap of Scout’s small feet as she came into our room. It’s a testament to just how tired he is that Andy is not enforcing the “sleep in your own room” rule. He pulled her up and she climbed over him so that the lineup in our double bed was now: daddy, Scout, Finn, mama. Once situated, tucked under Andy’s arm, she reached out take hold of Finn’s hand, stilled, and fell back asleep.

We’ve been playing the bed shuffle game every night since we got here, since that first night when I was so freaked out by the darkness of unfamiliar night and I wanted all my chicks nowhere else but under my wings.

That night every sound was sinister, and all the warnings and suspicions and fears I’d absorbed and recycled in our planning and preparation to come here, clotted and lay thickened on my sleepless chest. What might just be the quiet scrape of dry avocado leaves on pavement was more likely the rasp of huge insect legs, or the scuff of an intruder’s heel. Every creak and groan of our house contracting in the cooling air made my heart freeze momentarily. I heard a bruised, tapering canine whimper somewhere nearby and knew someone ruthless had just picked off one of the neighbour’s dogs so he could come in and…

I forced myself to follow every morbid line of thought to its bloody conclusion so I’d be prepared to protect the kids.

The only way I can describe my sate of frozen alertness that night is to compare it to the way I used to lie awake in bed after I woke up from a nightmare as a child. Any movement would resurrect whatever evil had woken me up in the first place; there was nothing to do but lie there and listen in stiff terror, trying to keep my chest from moving as I breathed.

Then I heard a twitter, and all at once a rush of calls and chirps; and hopefulness arrived with feathers. It was impossible to stay afraid during the dawn bird chorus. Soon the sky was getting lighter, and then suddenly the sun was streaking orange light through our curtainless windows.




The bed shuffle now is more about nighttime nursing and teaching Scout to sleep through the night again. It doesn’t take a parent to tell you (though every parent can attest) that lack of sleep can really discolor reality. The basics of happy family living, let alone doing something Good for Humanity can seem unfindable in the dark of exhaustion.

Last night, peeking out from sandpaper eyelids, I looked down at my family before I relinquished our unintended family bed to go sleep in Scout’s now vacant one with Finn for the last few hours of night. Like some “armpit snuggle” variation on nesting dolls, they were tucked one into the other in descending order; Scout’s head snuggled in Andy’s, Finn’s head in Scout’s. Keeping each other close under tight, sleeping wings. Feathered things after all.