A Moment

I was tired last night – the kind of bone tired I can get from too many days waking before, I hate to admit, 4 am. It was 3:57 am when I woke up yesterday. I had some things on my mind, I guess you could say.

So at the end of my day – breakfast and getting my son off to school, a full day of work with no breaks, picking my son up after school and getting him to Karate, making dinner (a mixed seafood pasta with a light cream sauce – a combination of shrimp, salmon and rockfish, that turned out quite nice), helping with homework, finally getting my son into the shower before bed – I lay down on the sofa. I actually was laying down. Just for a moment. When my son was out of the shower, my husband joked that I was “toast.” “Soggy toast,” I replied. And we all laughed.

We decided my husband would put our son to bed, and I’d go crash early. My son was disappointed. He prefers me as the putter-to-bed person. I like it too, and have almost never agreed to let go of this part of the day for something as minor as my own exhaustion. I love the end of the day with him – the reading, the bedtime prayers, the “Thank you, God” conversation we both have, the time for private, quiet talking and often not-so-quiet giggling or silliness that I’m sure I’m supposed to resist because it’s bedtime, but I’m a sucker for cultivating every possible moment for pleasure in a day, even if it’s after light’s out. [I just realized the double entendre in that statement - perhaps this is how our most fundamental grown-up bedtime intimacies are first created, in how we are put to bed by our parents.]

But last night I gave in to the soggy toast exhaustion. I offered for my son to lie down with me for a snuggle-moment on the sofa before he and I went to our separate beds. He just about ran over, and for the briefest moment in time, his body was elongated next to mine, my hand felt his warm, smooth skin under his pj top as I gave him a light back rub, I felt his still-wet hair on my cheek and his lavender shampoo residue wafted over me. We stayed like this for just a few minutes, the two of us simply breathing and being. I felt his body relax, sigh into the sofa and into me. It was a perfect moment that pulled me to a place where I couldn’t even imagine being tired.