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.

Weekend Morning

I set the alarm for 5:15 so I could at least lie in the bed for a few minutes before our visiting little-guys woke; it went off and I was wide awake, all too aware that they were sleeping just on the other side of our bedroom wall. "This is good!" I thought. "I can think my own thoughts, stretch, do bound-angle pose and even change that darn dressing on my incision before they wake at 6!"

That's when I heard a small sound as a hand-scrawled note came sliding under the door. "Can we get up now TT? it said.

They were already awake!  At quarter past five in the morning!  And had evidently been awake long enough for the older one to have found paper and pencil and composed a full sentence.

Then the bedroom door opened and in they rushed us. They got right in the bed, with us, turned on the TV and for 45 minutes lay on their tummies watching the jazzy pre-teen lingo and fast moving graphics on Disney HD.

I won't lie: I lay on my tummy watching too. In fact we all watched except for Old Dave. "Papa can sleep through anything!" said the little brother. That he can, and always could, from way back when he looked like this, my sister has called him "Lying Down Man." 

After the pancakes and bacon, the juice and the mangoes,  the brushing of the teeth and the inspecting of TT’s green toenail polish we manned our battle stations to give those lights sabers a work out as promised.

I sigh happily remembering it even as I yearn for a nap here. Besides engaging in a little sword play what's nicer on a weekend morning than lying in bed with friends?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtKnGSOt5tk]

Tonight Tonight

Our kitchen has three fruit bowls on the counter, all brimming, all constantly being refilled. The washing machine goes day and night. If Person Five comes back today to clean out her stuff there’ll be six people in the house.This is all just temporary. Person Six was born here but he’s just visiting for the weekend. Person Five is moving to a new apartment to begin her real life in the area and Persons Three and Four have begun taking boxes over to their own new place that they’ve been waiting for since they first saw it in May.That will leave only Persons One and Two, Who brought their own boxes to this place over 30 years ago with a 26-month-old, then welcomed another baby a month later and a final baby a few turns of the moon after that.

(the big ones are Persons One and Two - that's me in my 80's hair )

It’s a big old house, with a long curving upstairs hallway around which we walked many nights holding this or that crying baby or toddler, BUT: It won’t feel big tonight when those two little guys come for their sleepover.Their parents tell us they wake fighting and fight the day through- in a manly way fisticuffs, wrestling moves, choke-holds. It’s what boys do, everybody says.Attempting to go with that I bought them both Star Wars Light Sabers for tonight's fun - plus one for me. We tested them out last weekend.“Are you out of your MIND?” said Old Dave, regarding this arsenal. He thinks the bigger child will deal the little one a mighty blow and in the process all three Light Sabers will spontaneously shatter.He doesn’t understand the delicacy of Jedi swordplay. We three do because we watched the 15 minute video that comes with our new toys.Anyway there’s this: Person Number Four took these two children to camp and to Magic Garden three mornings this week and recorded these moments as they said their goodbyes. Now does this look like fighting to you?Me I think it’s going to be a feast of hugs and kisses around here in the next 23 hours (with maybe some thudding feet at 5am around that upstairs hallway.)And if things take a more warlike turn I'll just channel my own inner Yoda :-)

anyway we look a lit alike