Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-09-12 - 9:31 p.m.

Alone

Youngest is having great trouble these days getting to sleep. She's anxious about school and other things, I know. It's hard to help. When one is not yet old enough to read bad murder mysteries, how DOES one lull one's self to sleep?

Imagine good things, I tell her. With your eyes closed. There is no real barrier between wakefulness and sleep; it is kind of a slow slip, unnoticed. You can't TRY to sleep, of course. Adults know this, but children don't. She wants to fall asleep, so she tries.

She does not want to sleep alone. In a perfect world, she would never have to. But this is not a perfect world, and we sleep alone sometimes even when we wish we didn't. It is a skill we need, like eating alone at the counter or riding alone on a bus. We can learn to strike up conversations, but we can't invite strangers into our beds.

She has her Harry Potter blanket and her regular animals, as well as rotating guest animals, whoever is currently in favor - a bat or a unicorn, usually. She has her night light and her quilt and her familiar room. But the skill of easy aloneness - she hasn't got that, yet.

She comes into my room to tell me she can't fall asleep. She has read and read, dropping the books on the floor beside her bed. She has thought of Disneyland, her last trip and her future trips. Sleep hasn't arrived.

She wakes me up to tell me this.

I push things off the other side of the bed, allow her in. I shouldn't, I know. Although I believe in the family bed as harbor from nightmares, I know this is a crucial time for her, and I know she needs to build the confidence and faith that will allow her to rest without my solid presence. But she has awakened me twice, and I am tired, and I feel bad for her, and I let her in. Then I have to read MYSELF back to sleep.

She curls easily up against my back, and is asleep in minutes. Older Daughter, while she visits my bed after nightmares, doesn't curl against me. She sleeps as an adult sleeps, on her own side, stretched out in calm repose. Little one still curls, heat-seeking, and will chase me across the bed, if I move. I envy her simple bare need for contact, and her simple certainty that it is her right to need it.

I semi-wake her after a bit, and send her back to her own bed. Sometimes I walk with her, as she occasionally makes the wrong turn and heads the other way down the hall, confused. Having found sleep, she clings to the corner of it as I tuck her back in. I slip on the pile of failed books. She has tried, I can see. I wonder what thoughts trouble her rest, what safety I offer. But then, perhaps it's just about not being alone. Alone can be such a rich sea to swim in, luxuriant - but it can also have cold undercurrents, sharp reefs, long horizons. Successful solitude is a treasure that will see her through much of her life. Learning to treasure it can be an icy lesson.

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