Sleep

Every night is different.  Some nights, the boy goes loco after having too much cookies and cream ice cream.  Some nights, the dog goes loco for no reason at all, chasing endlessly around the stairs and the back room and the front porch, chasing what, an imaginary squirrel? a ghostly deer?  Some nights nothing happens at all, and the boy goes to sleep quickly after talking about the Hardy Boys, and the dog quickly relieves herself in the front lawn and hurriedly comes back inside, and I watch Hogan’s Heroes and compose myself ready to bed.

Tonight is different.  My son’s best friend in the neighborhood is now – tentatively – asleep on the couch.  My son is asleep – definitively – in his bed upstairs.  The dog is instinctively wrapped in a ball on the couch at the best friend’s feet.  She knows that my son is just a wingnut and doesn’t need reassurance, but oddly, she also knows that her job isn’t to be with me.  Her job – in her canine mind – is to reassure, and that means she is correctly placed at the feet of a nine year old boy.

Let’s be quiet.  This will by nature be short.

My son’s friend is – to use a British phrase – on pins and needles.  His parents split up a year and a half ago, the divorce finalized just in the last few months.  My son is also the product of a divorced couple but it’s been now more than five years, and he’s pretty much okay with everything – his friend isn’t.  He had a stomach ache and a panic attack earlier, this is the first sleepover he’s had away from one of his parents in a few months.  But he didn’t want to go to his father’s house earlier, and he was nervous about “ditching” a sleepover with his friend, my son, just as much.  He tore himself to pieces trying to reconcile at least four, if not more, vectors of “doing the right thing” at once.

I have no doubt that I did everything wrong.  We took the dog, my son, and the boy for a walk to the nearby ice cream stand.  We got ice cream and frappes and “doggie dishes”, and walked back home.  He called his mom and freaked out, but also said he wanted to stay here and didn’t want to have his mom take him to his dad’s house.  I let him and my son have an hour of screen time and then told them to brush their teeth and get into bed; my son’s friend was worried about his mom, who called him again and tried to reassure him.  My son crawled into his bed but the other boy wanted to sleep on the couch.  I put sheets and blankets on the couch, and he crawled in, and the dog curled up at his feet.

The dog, who is a little nippy and, as mentioned previously, generally goes slightly insane every night chasing imaginary rabbits, reminds me that reincarnation isn’t a bad thing if you can find a creature that can love others.  She loves this young boy who is terrified and in a bad place right now.  She relates to him purely through love, and seems to know that that is the highest and best relation that any creature can accomplish at this moment, for a small boy who is scared.

My son is asleep in his room.  He was hoping to have a sleepover companion in his room, but I explained that his friend might be afraid, and might need to sleep downstairs, and he was okay with that.

The dog is snoring.  My son is fast asleep.  His friend has started up twice in the last hour, but it was just a bad dream, and the dog nuzzled him, and curled tighter against his feet, and I tussled his hair and told him everything was okay, and he fell back against the pillow.

I’ll stay awake.  This is the best job on earth.  No one will ever know.