Overnight Change
by
Jeff Stimpson
Three months ago, a doctor asked me how Alex
sleeps. "Great!" I replied, with the enthusiasm common to those
about to stride into spinning propeller blades. "Eleven hours a
night!"
Overnight, Alex has gone from 11 hours to about
seven.
The decline and fall of my evenings started late
last year, when Alex figured out how to open the door of his bedroom
from the inside. For a long, sweet time, this knob alone had been
worth the purchase price of our Manhattan apartment: It worked
stiff, and had a small, smooth surface that Alex's tiny hands
couldn't turn enough to open the door. We'd put him and Ned, who's
still crib-bound, in the bedroom about 7:30, read to them for half
an hour, dim the lights, start the lullaby cassettes, and head out
to the living room to do what all loving marrieds do when they're
alone and the kids are in bed at last: watch "Seinfield" and eat our
goddamned dinner in peace.
For as long as half an hour, though, Alex would
come to the door every few minutes and rattle the knob and screech
until one of us had to get up and order him to bed. After half a
dozen of these rattle-screech-order drills, Alex would go to bed and
all we'd hear through the door was the peace of sleeping kids.
In a way that would make me proud if it didn't
make me exhausted, Alex has adapted. Even that is not as bad as it
sounds. On weekends, for instance, when I've run him through two or
even three playgrounds and kept him steadily outside from about 10
a.m. until late afternoon, he still curls up with binkie and stuffed
Elmo around 7:30. Maybe 8.
But most nights, once, twice, even more time a
night, we're yanked awake as he squirms between us, clacking Elmo's
huge plastic eyeballs on our headboard. "Alex, be still!" This would
be fine with me if he just came up and passed out, but he wiggles
around, kicks, even screeches until one of us has to cast back the
blankets, grab him by the wrist, and say, "Go back to bed,
Alex!" We take him back more roughly, I'm ashamed to admit, as the
night goes on and the obese green numbers of our clock radio keep
going in the blackness: 1:35; 3:52; 4:46.
Sometimes Alex sleeps through until six.
Sometimes.
We've been keeping him up later in the evenings,
letting him fall asleep on the couch, watching the kind of TV I've
spent a lifetime wanting to share with my son: "Star Trek," Tora
Tora Tora, Horatio Hornblower. Sometimes he sits quietly on the
couch, hugging the cushion before darting into our bedroom to return
with T shirts to cuddle with. Sometimes. Other times, he's up every
two seconds, just as I settle into the recliner, and I can't keep
him on the couch no matter how often I present the plain choices:
Couch or bed. Couch or bed, Alex, couch or bed, until I sound like a
worn-out parrot.
Last night, when he wouldn't stay on the couch
around 9 p.m., and afterwards he still wouldn't go to bed, I slapped
a bin of plastic zoo animals across the room. Jill covered her face
with her hands. "It's like we're in one of those commercials with
the bad family situation," she said. "The out-of-control child, the
angry dad, the depressed mom."
What saps us here is the potential endlessness,
how even after he's back in his room these nights, we're left
staring at the clock (... 1:35; 3:52; 4:46 ...) and wondering
just why this should end, why he shouldn't be doing the same
thing at age 6 and 16 and 26. Maybe, though, it will get better in
the winter: It's bright this time of year in the morning, and we
have only venetian blinds in the boys' room. Also, next year, he'll
be going to a school that has a playground.
Maybe by then I'll no longer wake up at six like I
did this morning, unable to get back to sleep because I kept hearing
something go thump. It woke Jill up, too, and she said, "I'm not
sure what that is, but I don't think it's Alex." But it was.
Copyright 2003 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
