Bedroom doors stay open when we lay down each night at 10 o’clock. They always will as long as I’m able to be the Protector.
I lay in bed, wandering slowly to dream land—Nod we used to call it in the days of nursery rhymes and Robert Louis Stevenson. I think thru my day, looking for lessons, reminding myself of ways to do better. I offer up silent prayers of thanksgiving and worship. I never make it so far as thinking about tomorrow. It has to worry about itself.
I hear them talking softly, laughing, and playing imagine long after they’ve cleaned and brushed and put down books.
Somewhere just short of sleep I hear Her say, “Tell them to go to sleep,” as if I’m the Punisher.
“Mmm,” I say, in a voice as soft as my pillow.
How much time passes? Forty-five minutes? An hour? Longer? I feel Her rise to go scold them.
“Leave them be,” I say, now recalling my father’s un-grammatical Pennsylvania German-Scots idioms and letting those old, misty images perc to the top of my brain.
“They should be sleeping,” she says, scolding me instead.
“They’re making memories,” I mumble and smile inside my reverie, knowing just what they’ll be recalling in their sleep long after I am gone.