We were moving from books ‘n milk to the brushing of the teeth, stations two and three of a five-station, post-dinner nightly journey that ends with lullabies in bed and, for the elder and more insomniac of the pair, rambling conversations about the larger questions of life.
All this rhythm and ritual has been road-tested by years of parenting and a statistically significant number of controlled experiments (no ritual? bedlam!). It’s no simple matter, to ease their young bodies and minds from the hurly-burly of the day into the waiting arms of Morpheus. Before, I would never have put such stock in this kind of stuff–in fact, I would have considered it far more “routine” than “ritual,” and derided it. No longer. I’ve learned.
I had just finished reading Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen to the boychild whilst the girlchild bore a hole in page after page of her latest American Girl historical yarn. We were gathering our things, and the boychild was already heading into the bathroom on Mama’s back. I had been thinking something as I was reading Night Kitchen. I’m not sure what led me to it, but I made the judgement call that his older sister was old enough to hear a little something about the slings and arrows that fly around the books they read.
