The Resting Time is my Golden Hour. Every afternoon, for one hour, the children each go to their beds, and I go to the couch, or my own bed, or even the kitchen table, and read or write or talk on the phone without interruption. The boys almost never sleep, and Emma Grace sleeps about 50% of the time.
Lately, however, we have not wanted her to sleep at all, because when she does, she seems to find it Nearly Impossible to fall asleep at night. This is Not Fun. When this happens she gets out of bed, she comes down the stairs, she stands at the door of her room and calls for us, she needs drinks of water, she is scared. She drives us crazy. So we have found that it’s better if she doesn’t sleep at resting time but plays quietly in her room and listens to music, even if we have to endure a little extra crankiness as the day wears on.
But yesterday we let her sleep. She seems to have developed a mild case of pink-eye, and we knew she was tired, so we let her sleep.
She slept for a long time.
First she came downstairs. She was sent back again and given Good Reason not to repeat that performance. Then she called for me. “Mommy! Mommy!” “What is it, Emma Grace?” “I’m scared!” “Of what?” Silence. This is because she isn’t really scared. She would just rather be up, or down. Stairs, that is. Well, we dealt with the fear factor and she was quiet again for awhile.
And then, “Mommy!” “Yes, Emma Grace?” “I’m sick.” “Oh?” Big questions in my mind, but little doubt. And sure enough, she was not sick, though she came downstairs to the downstairs bathroom and flushed twice in rapid succession. I was lying on the couch of course, swollen foot up, exhausted, wishing I could hurry after her, cursing my crutches.
I convinced Emma that she was not likely going to throw up, but that the upstairs and downstairs toilets are all of a piece when it comes to being sick, so she might as well go upstairs. And that’s where Bill found her when he finally emerged from helping the boys in their room. He went up to her, and their conversation travelled down the stairs to me.
“Emma Grace, why are you out of your bed?”
“Because I’m sick, Daddy.”
“Are you sick, little girl?”
Silence.
“We’ve talked about this before, Emma Grace. You need to tell the truth. Do you know what it means to tell the truth?”
“Yes.”
“If you are really sick, then it is good to say that you are sick. That’s telling the truth. But if you are not really sick, and are just saying that you are sick because you don’t want to be in bed, then that’s a lie, and it is wrong to lie. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“I need to go downstairs again, but I’ll be right back. Now I want you to stay here and think about telling the truth.”
And a little while later, when I hobbled past the foot of the stairs to get something from my desk, I could see that the light was on in the bathroom.
“Emma Grace, are you still sick?” I said to her.
“I’m finking about it,” she said.
Not long after that, she was back in bed, having overcome her sickness by purely psychological means. And she slept.
