Night Mirrors

PLUS: A very exciting bench.

A Note for You, If You’re Having A Hard Day

Dear Friend,

My daughter, T, has started sleeping in our bed.

She doesn’t start out there. She starts out in her own bed, where it’s the right temperature, the right darkness, where all her stuffed animals live, and her books, and her approximately nine million things purchased to try to get her to sleep. She’s always had trouble sleeping through the night, and I was the same way as a child. I think the night is incredibly scary. It is an appropriate universal balance that we must experience this horribly terrifying thing once per 24 hour period.

Anyway, she falls asleep, at first, in her own bed. That’s good – that means if my husband Luke and I are lucky and the time is 9:30 p.m. or earlier, which is about 50% of the time, we can watch an episode of Taskmaster. And then we’re living the dream. In the middle of the night, she comes into our room and crawls in between us. To make this work, we have three separate blankets on the bed – a silky one for her, a light one for me, and a behemoth that I bet is rancid with sweat by now BECAUSE IT IS SUMMER AND THIS IS A DOWN COMFORTER MY DUDE for Luke.

Maybe this sounds horrible to you, but I think it’s the best possible case. I bought a king sized bed when T started having sleep problems (outside of a crib) two years ago. I thought that a big enough bed could accommodate all three people, and it’s true, as long as one is fairly tiny.

OK, so, I’m not sure if I know how to make what I’m about to write next not creepy. Is it creepy? You tell me. (I hate the word “creepy,” by the way. I was trying to think of a synonym, and came up with “disturbing,” but unfortunately, “creepy” is the word I mean here, and so I have to use it.)

I liked to stare at my first boyfriend’s face while he slept. I remember the thoughts I had in these moments: he was so soft, look at all those little hairs on his ears, the skin over his eyelids like paper. He isn’t the only boyfriend/girlfriend/bedfellow whose sleeping face I have studied. Suffice it to say that if you and I dated and you ever fell asleep around me, I sighed deeply while considering your eyelashes.

I thought that this was a feeling that couldn’t be beat, but I didn’t know what it was like to watch a child you love sleep. If a child is asleep, then something about this moment is safe. They’re so vulnerable, and nothing bad is going to happen to them here or now. There’s nothing like it. My daughter’s drowsy eyes; her dreams about tall sunflowers who can talk.

The other great miracle about this sleeping arrangement – a beautiful thing that I am aware is mercifully temporary, like every wonderful thing about raising children – is hearing T’s first thought of the day. First thoughts are gauzy and wobbly, unsure of how to be solid or if they can even stand. They’re feral: one foot in the subconscious and the other in the light of day. Usually, we only get our own. Grown-ups know not to wake up and say truly bizarre things out loud to their partners or cats. But for a long time, children are un-self-conscious, and my daughter is still in that life stage. A rare gift.

Yesterday, she had a nightmare. (She calls these “night mirrors,” and I imagine she isn’t alone, since it makes a lot more sense than the real word, which is essentially “night female horse.”) When she woke up, I asked her to share about it and she launched into a hard-to-follow narrative about a gooey monster and a frog best friend. “But it was all OK in the end, because Ribbit saved the day.” Phewf. Thank you, Ribbit.

Luke said, “That sounds scary. You know, I remember my first nightmare.”

This shocked me. What forty-something man remembers their first anything? But given just a moment of thought, I remembered my first one, too. Or, at least, a very early one. I guess you hold on to early fear. It teaches you something.

“What happened in your first nightmare?” T asked.

“I was Little Red Riding Hood, and I was very tiny, and a big huge wolf was after me. No matter what I did, he would find me.”

“Mine was like that too,” I said. “Except, it was a robber. And he stole Winnie the Pooh, right out of his house, while he was sleeping. And there was nothing I could do to stop him or to save Winnie the Pooh. The robber just went down a dirt path and was gone.”

T asked, “But what was the happy ending?”

Nightmares don’t have happy endings. That’s what makes them nightmares. A nightmare with a happy ending is just a “weird dream.” At our initial confusion, T clarified. “You know, because everything ends up OK in the end. So that can’t be the end of the story.”

It occurred to me that maybe T had not dreamed about Ribbit saving day (that part of her recollection was suspiciously devoid of detail). Maybe she’d written it. I could try that.

I said that I woke up all of Winnie the Pooh’s friends, and we got together to try to figure out where the robber was. We all went together to the robber’s house, and Winnie the Pooh was in there, and he was OK. And we rescued him. It surprised me, how good – how actually kind of (SORRY SORRY SORRY BUT) healing? – it was to end the story like that. I hadn’t realized it had been cut off in the middle, but of course, it had.

Luke escaped the wolf in his re-imagining. T was satisfied and moved on to who she wanted to cosplay that day.

While she was eating breakfast, I thought about a recent nightmare I’d had where T and I both died in an explosion, and I could hear her ghost voice but not see her, and she said that she didn’t want to be dead and that she was afraid. How could that dream have been OK in the end? I imagined that I found her, and that we were spirits, and that even as spirits, I could hold her. And I would say to her, “It makes sense that you don’t want to be dead. We don’t know very much about being dead. But here I am, and I will keep you close to me.” And in this iteration, that would make her feel better.

What an incredible trick. I felt like I had to tell you about it.

It reminded me of that quote that goes, “Everything will be OK in the end, and if it’s not OK, then it’s not the end.” I don’t know if life is really so pithy, but the sentiment is comforting. As long as you are awake to the reality that there will be hard and messy parts in the middle, is it wrong to feel the glimmering possibility – or, if you dare, the likeliness – of OK-ness when the story comes to a close? No. It is not. We’re all just trying to be brave enough to fall asleep at night. We’re all just trying to be brave enough to wake up and live.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

• Yesterday, I got an email from the Rogers Park branch of the Chicago Public Library that said this:

  Hi Sophie,

  The Rogers Park Business Alliance has generously supplied art pieces in front of our library for the past couple years.

  This spring, they contacted me and asked for list of book titles, highlighting local authors and important titles, to decorate a bench that would replace the previous sculpture.

  The bench was just installed yesterday. I asked them to include your book, Kin, and they gave you a great spot:

  

  I did actually immediately start to cry. The library is my favorite place. I feel so, so grateful to be alive at a time when there are libraries, and to live close to a good one is also a gift I can’t overstate. This is… I mean, I’m gobsmacked. 😭😭😭😭😭😭. (I got a keyboard where you can type 😭 as a key. Very useful for this kind of moment.)

You get to program the emojis, so here are the ones I chose: 💛😭🥦🐦.

• Sammi and I had this cartoon in The New Yorker last week:

Loose Thoughts:

• It’s fly season, and 99.99% of my loose thoughts are about flies.

• I listened to Stephen King’s memoir, because I’m mid-novel process. It was written in 1999 and reads like that, but it was fun to think about how some people get to make grand, sweeping statements about writing, in second person, as though they are universally true. I like that kind of confidence, and I had a good time listening to the book. Also, even if it’s totally an act, he is so obsessed with his wife in this book. Like, nonstop obsessed with her, reads out loud some of her poems in there… he’s just crazy about her and they met so young. IDK is it OK for me to think that’s cute?

• I have not read a Stephen King book, and I don’t plan to, because they’re scary.

• FLIES.

• Last week I asked about summer wardrobes, and here were some of your answers:

  • walrus: Summer wardrobe staples: shapeless linen dresses, kavu short overalls (shortalls? shorteralls?) with succulent print - all with generous pockets.

  • L. Jones: my wife and I both have House Dress, which in our home is a spaghetti strap, lightweight sundress that you change into after taking your Outside World clothes and bra off. You might get the mail, sit on the front porch, or walk the dog after dark in it, but you would not run any errands in it because you wear it until it is see-through.

  • Krissy: My summer uniform is Duluth Trading Co’s Dry on the Fly shorts (super comfy, lots of pockets) and Old Navy Luxe Sleeveless Tops. I sometimes think I should find a uniform that looks nicer or more put together, but this is comfy and allows me to move in all the ways I want to. I have a dozen of the tanks in different colors and a few pairs of the shorts, and it means I never have to think about what to wear, which I also love.

  • Becca: My summer uniform is nylon running shorts with the built in undies (because I HATE wearing actual underwear) and pockets and a cotton Fruit of the Loom tank style “sports” bra. If I’m leaving the house I’ll put a t shirt on.

  • Jana: Absolutely would recommend Duluth Trading Company Heirloom short romper. I got mine on poshmark and it’s a lovely greenish shade. I don’t see them on the website but here’s a diff red one on poshmark. Just size down, they run big.

• This time I’m going to ask about salads. What is your salad take? (I tried writing “hot salad take” but all I could see was “hot salad.”)

• Today I’m going to get to the beach for lunch, and I need to land at 12:30, so I’m signing off a little earlier than normal. You’ve gotta take seriously these days where the weather is appropriate for Beach Lunch.