Nighty Night

Trying to get Merry sleepy here. She's planning a play and she's so full of vim and crazy she can't go to sleep. Almost ten.

She is proposing ways to fall asleep. The latest: make a picture frame, cover it with feathers, put in a picture of someone you like, hang it on the wall, look at it, and go to sleep with good dreams.

I just figured out she is describing a Native American dream catcher. Maybe we'll make one soon. Will it banish endless brain prattling? It had better have a lot of feathers.

Mommy? Do you know something? Do you know what helps me go to sleep? . . .A little sound. Like music or something. . .like music without singing, like the music we listen to on Bach.

And. . .she's off to bed. I think I made her yawn.

Tonight Elspeth said (her book is Mickey and the Night Kitchen. She fills in on the "Cockledoddle-do!" with great gusto--Merry's was Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak fans.)--Mommy, Mickey is my friend.

And it occurred to me that she expressed the power and magic of good characters and good books. We feel as if a character, no matter how messy or lovely or crazy, is our friend. We know that person intimately by the end of the book, and we miss them when the book is over.

I just finished enjoying the latest installment in Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. Prior to this novel, I had finished a more challenging, serious book and I was ready for a bit of a holiday, so I checked out Happiness and Blue Shoes from the Library. What a treat. Precious Ramotswe, and all those engaging characters, they are my friends. My friends. At one point, after finishing a chapter (I savor every word, like chocolate drops, like Smarties), the baby asleep beside me and Martin beside her, a certain illusive feeling swept over me: a memory of childhood in Kenya, when all was safe and the weather was warm and the skies were clear and the dust sparkled in the air and I could hear the swish-swish sound of bare feet on wooden floors. . .this feeling washed over me like warm afternoon sunshine and I thought, "If only I could fall asleep in this feeling." And so I did.

If only I could bottle up that feeling and take little sips of it after a long, taxing day. But that would be cheating the magic, and then it would not be magic anymore but medication. Because that sort of contentment, that deep peace that hits you when you least expect it--it's like encountering a good character--you extend your hand with surprise, but with steady recognition. Ah, yes, it's you. Haven't I met you somewhere before?