Come Sit Next to Me

My 4 year-old doesn’t sleep. He’s not a vampire or anything, he just knows that his time of requited autonomy is slipping with every day, month, year that he grows, and he’s destined to hold on to it for as long as humanly possible. I think, he thinks, that once the sun sets, the real magic begins. As evidenced by his, “but why aren’t you guys going to sleep yet?”. His question, more of a pronouncement: I know what happens on the other side of the sun and I want in. To the TV without animated characters and access to those sweet sweet drinks. None of that water stuff. He wants in--to what he perceives to be a freedom he does not have access to in the daylight hours. What he doesn’t realize is that there is no difference for us. Our nighttime hours are us just surviving the daytime, feeling like we beat a fate that was destined to overtake us. We parented. And now we deserve some rest. But the blood-sucking child that is my 4-year old refuses to grant us that peace. He is sustained by sucking our life-blood while it is day. When it is night, no man can work. And he sees this as an opportunity to seize, yield his power that has ground us down, caused us to give-up. He pokes and prods and rubs us down to the point when we finally declare: Fine, August. Come sit next to me.