T-O B-E-D

I heard these five letters recited above my head many, many times in my childhood. I think my parents quickly realized that spelling it out didn't fool me for a second, but it was a tradition. A tradition started by my father's pediatrician, when his mother received a directive to send her own sick child off to bed.

T-O B-E-D.

I remember being disappointed to leave the World of Adults, where all the cool things happened far beyond my bedtime, or so I believed: the fun television shows, the interesting conversations. Now, of course, I'm more than happy to crawl into bed at the end of the day, but first there are dishes to do, laundry to fold, mail to sort. Now that we have a few hours of time without baby to ourselves every evening, I realize that some day le Petit will be convinced that everything worthwhile happens after he's asleep.

Okay, so my husband and I did watch a rented film together last night for the first time since I came home from the hospital. And I do use the time that le Petit sleeps in the evening to get in blog entries, now that he's doing a twenty-minute power-nap routine during the day. But would he really find any of this worth staying up for?

I sneak into his room and see him curled up in a corner of his crib, his hands pulled close to his head, and the first thing I think is how I want to curl up in my own bed, in the same calm, dimly lit room, and join him.