Sleep is fleeting. I'm listening, now, to her sister talk to her in their room down the hall. I am listening, but also in the interim moments between their bedtime and my own I am listening to myself.
I am a cliche.
This past weekend my ex-husband questioned if I wanted to see my children at all. It is a long story to tell, this one, and it ends with my searching through months of text messages to find evidence of a pattern of behavior - not his, my own - and finding no such pattern should have ended in relief or triumph, but there are no simple feelings. Instead, I wandered my house thinking, doubting; maybe I hadn't done enough to prove that I wanted them or loved them, or enjoyed them.
I don't know how to dig that out.
Someone mentioned off-handedly that my daughter was sick because of a late bedtime one night, and I laughed, took that as well as I could, but it settles and it gnaws until my chest feels tight - I don't know how to take care of these children, I hear myself say, I don't know how to love them or protect them.
When my first daughter was born, I was overwhelmed with the idea that if I walked away she would have a chance for something great. My then husband could find someone more deserving, more prepared to care for her, he could find her real mother. It echoed; this was a mistake, I was a mistake, and to make things right for her I needed to go.
All these things settle down into my bones until everything is darkness.
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Even if she falls asleep in her own bed, she will wander into mine tonight. She will wake me up, and I will not be able to return to sleep.
It won't matter.
I will lay nose to nose with her until the sun rises.