Where We Lay Our Heads

I woke up mighty early the other day because these two slept over:The big one got up at 4:45, as he tells me he does every day and that was fine. I was up myself.The reason I was up is on account of the game of musical beds we play when these two stay over stay over which goes roughly like this:One, Mr. Early Bird sleeps on a pull-out sofa in a little back bedroom, an arrangement he finds very cozy and satisfying.Two, his little brother sleeps with ‘Papa’ so there are two Davids in the old marital bed, one ‘my’ original David, and the other his little grandson and namesake. He won’t consider lying down anywhere else.And three, since I also time-travel when I sleep, I can’t be in the same bed with anyone but my own Original Dave, beloved companion of many decades on this long bus trip called life. I just can’t be in the same bed with a little egg-beater of a person like his namesake  who in sleep, sends his small sturdy legs shooting across the sheets until they hit the closest warm thing. When I peek in at the two of them the little one is often  nestled right up against his grandfather’s back. I can't bear having even a cat on the bed with me I travel so far when I sleep. All my life this has been true for me: I don’t just forget when it is, I forget who I am.Soooo I sleep in the third of the three bedrooms on this our second floor and feel completely happy in it. There is something so peaceful-seeming about finding yourself in an unaccustomed bed right in your own house. It makes me feel the way I used to feel when my sister and  I would get sick as little kids and our mother would carry us to her bed to be sure we didn’t perish entirely in the night..In fact I'm watching over this oldest child just 20 feet away, listening for those first stirrings when he wakes before dawn, but it feels as though someone is watching over me.That must be how we're meant to feel when we sleep, in a world without war or violence.It’s a great way to feel all right.I wonder if these youngsters feel that way when they hold their new little sister, who will one day have overnights here too in time. Maybe I can go sleep with her.