Bedtime

It helps to make space in the home for quiet moments, moments when “nothing” is happening. At those times, often just before children go to bed, or are in bed waiting for sleep, growth spurts, breakthroughs, creativity, sharing, connecting can emerge. The world has come to a stop. In the quiet, my (mkz) daughter reaches for her sketchpad, sits peacefully, concentrating and creating, completely absorbed in her work. On another night, I might read her a simple story that absorbs her imagination, looking into her eyes in moments when the story touches us or makes us smile. Sometimes I just sit with her, and after a while, she may bring up something that happened in school, or something that is bothering her. In the silence of the night, things have a chance to surface.

When our children were little we sang to them, told them stories, or read to them. As teenagers, some of them still liked to be read to at times. They also listened to music before drifting off to sleep. By bedtime, many different currents from the day are coming together.

Each child is different. Some children find it easy to fall asleep. For others, the transition is very difficult. At times, when our children were little, we tried everything possible to make bedtime a peaceful ending to the day. Sometimes, especially when we were tired ourselves, no matter what we did, it was anything but peaceful.

As hard as we both tried to protect this time, many things got in our way. Work to be done, phone calls to make arrangements for the next day, more than one child needing us, or children of different ages having different needs, often pulling us in different directions. Older children’s needs can get shortchanged, taking a backseat to the younger ones. It’s an ongoing juggling act. Sometimes a peaceful bedtime gets lost in all this. But the nights when we made the space to be fully present and somehow it came about, sharing a child’s concern or feeling her drift into sleep reminded us how precious this time can be.

Now, by the small body of my sleeping son

the hidden river in my chest flows with my son’s

and I time my speech to the rhythm of his breath

joining my night with his, singing his night song

as if those waters underground

were secret rivers washing through the soul

bringing out the untold life

which is the stream he’ll join in growing old,

in silent hours when his sureness

of his self recedes. There he’ll find

the rest between the solid notes

that makes the song worthwhile.

DAVID WHYTE,
from “Looking Back at Night,” Where Many Rivers Meet