About thirty minutes after Alex went to bed last night, his daddy and I heard what sounded like a little crying going on in his room. And sure enough, when we checked on him, he was wide awake. He said that he couldn’t sleep, and for whatever reason, he seemed pretty upset about that whole not-sleeping thing.
I was overcome with empathy for my little man, so I crawled in the bed, snuggled up beside him, and sighed deeply as he rested his head in the crook of my shoulder.
We laid there quietly for about few minutes, and I thought about the countless times I’ve comforted him in the middle of the night. I thought about when he was three and getting used to his room in our current house. I thought about when he was two and in a “big boy bed” for the first time. I thought about when he was a newborn and I’d rock him back to sleep after a middle-of-the-night feeding.
And I remembered that when he was a baby, I could always rub my hand very gently across his forehead – back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – and after a few minutes, it was impossible for him to keep his eyes open.
I looked over at him and saw that he was still awake. So I whispered:
“Hey, buddy. You know what?”
“What, Mama?”
“When you were a baby, I would rub your forehead to make you fall asleep. Do you want me to try that now?”
“Sure, Mama,” he said. “I would love that.”
So I rubbed his little forehead – back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – and I marveled at how my “baby” is growing up. His legs stretch out almost to the end of a double bed now. His face is angular and thin. His hands look like a boy’s, not a baby’s.
I was so caught up in my reverie – and right on the verge of getting teary-eyed, I might add – that I jumped just a little bit when Alex’s voice interrupted the silence.
“Mama?” he whispered.
“Yes, baby?” I answered as I pulled him closer.
“Um, you know what?”
I waited for him to finish his thought, halfway anticipating that he was about to tell me how much he loves me, how grateful he is that I’m his mama.
“I don’t think I can really sleep anymore when you rub my head.”
Oh.
Well then.
Duly noted.
Reverie over, I reckon.
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