Sleeping Like Babies

Ben had a couple of friends sleep over last night.  I fell asleep to a chorus of chatter and laughter.  They are still asleep this morning right in the same spots where I left them, Jah-heem on the couch and Ben and Butoto in the matching recliners.  The only one who looks the least bit comfortable is Jah-heem.  But they are all sleeping like babies, babies in lanky, long teenaged bodies.  I’m missing my recliner and the Today show, but it’s nice and quiet right now, so I let them sleep.  Soon they will be ravaging the pantry looking for food.

I hated sleepovers as a kid.  I didn’t want anyone to stay over nor did I want to sleep at any one else’s house.  One sleepover from childhood haunts me to this day.  I can still picture the big brass bed, feel the glide of the green sateen sheets as my body moved against them, my scaly feet catching on the cheap fabric, and feel the utter terror I felt that night.   I keep thinking if I allowed the memory to come to me, I could make sense of it, but I haven’t been able to do that.  What haunts me is not knowing what happened, just remembering the crying and wanting to go home and the overwhelming sense of safety I felt knowing my Dad was coming to get me.  The only time I had a sleepover at my house was for my birthday one year.  We played 45’s on my record player and sang along with Don McLean’s American Pie flipping the record over for the second half of the song.  We broke a feather pillow while having a pillow fight and threw the feathers out a window to hide the evidence.  The next morning my mother brushed feathers from my hair and later that day I had to rake the lawn free of them. 

But Ben is different, he loves having friends sleep over and he likes sleeping over at others just as much.  If he could, it would be every weekend.   He loves being with his friends so much, he doesn’t want them to leave.  Ben and Jah-heem in particular are almost like brothers, they can’t stop irritating each other, touching and poking, wrestling and arguing over chairs.  If Ben could, he would be with friends 24/7.  I never had that feeling growing up.  I had friends but I never wanted to spend all my time with them, I had books to read and enjoyed being alone.  Sam is the one that looks like me, but I always thought that Ben and I were the most alike, but in this we are very different.   

I looked at the three of them sleeping this morning as I walked through the living room into the kitchen and was amazed at how innocent and peaceful they looked.  I don’t ever remember being that innocent and I’ve never been that peaceful sleeping at someone else’s house.  Maybe my life got to be so hard at that sleepover 40 years ago, but I may never know.  But for now I’m enjoying the slant of sunshine coming in the window and bathing them in a glow of light and the peace and quiet of sleeping children.

"Sleep, my little one, sleep my pretty one, sleep"  Alfred Lord Tennyson