Purple Blanket.

“Daddy, I can’t find my phone. It fell and I don’t know where it is.” My six year-old daughter said. My daughter loses a lot of things so this statement was not unique or surprising in itself. What was unique and surprising was that she said it at 3:30 in the morning, waking me up from a rather strange dream involving myself, Billy the Kid and some very hostile looking penguins. As I cleared my head, I brilliantly replied, “Turn your light on.” Knowing that this ingenious solution had probably escaped her sleep-weary mind. She left.
Proving once again that, on occasion, I am not completely without value, she returned to my bed with her phone and other things. For clarity, I must disclaim that I do not endorse or promote a six year-old having a cell phone. This phone was somehow one of several extra phones we acquired in an attempt to shave a few bucks off of our monthly bill. Through some cell phone company trickery or perhaps using the Bush system of “fuzzy math”, it was somehow cheaper to have three extra phones that we don’t use than just the ones we needed. My daughter, in another attempt to feel like a big girl, adopted one of these extra phones, which she carries around the house and uses as an alarm clock. Apparently, she must have been fumbling for it in the dark and it fell off of her shelf and went under her bed, thus the reason for her concern this late night.
As she climbed into my bed, I positioned myself firmly in a comfortable spot, knowing that it would not last. I tried to calculate the appropriate distance allowance for her shifting, twisting and kicking that would eventually force me to dangle on the thin edge of the bed without a pillow or a blanket. I’m not sure how she manages to manipulate a 200-pound man into a state of absolute discomfort so effortlessly. But she does it, regularly.
Per her ritual, she grabbed her fuzzy purple blanket and favorite doll, Mary, and slipped quietly between her mother and I and snuggled closely against my warm bare back. Some nights, it is annoying and I just wish she’d sleep in her own bed, but this night was different. It occurred to me at this unfortunate hour that like many things kids do, they don’t do them forever. We get a finite number of nights that our kids will climb into our bed and snuggle with us. I can already feel the number dwindling. Our daughter is six and our son is ten. On very rare occasions will he climb into our bed. Gradually, she will stop as well. I will be sad when they stop.
A certain duality exists is parenthood. On one hand, you want the kids to be more independent and able to help themselves. On the other hand, you want them to stay little. You want them to need you and to still be able to comfort them with a band-aid, a fudge- sickle, or a kind word.
So I tolerate my own lack of comfortable sleep and wake early with a sore back and don’t get up, but lay still and watch my daughter sleep. Her fresh and peaceful face evokes feelings that only a parent of sleeping children understands. At bedtime, they cry and whine and say “no way”, but then sleep and dream and are happy. You can then remember why you love them so. It is a forgiving time. It is a special time that reaches a place in the heart of a parent that is often untouched and overlooked and probably wouldn’t exist were it not for the vision of sleeping children. While I may I complain and futilely shove her back in place, sometimes a little violently, I feel the clock ticking on her, as well as me, and I understand that this time, like all other times, is fleeting and I’d better just appreciate it, because I know I’ll miss it when it’s gone.