Midnight pleasures
Of course, being up for hours in the middle of the night with a sick child is not exactly fun but it does, for me, have its compensatory pleasures.
Projecting calm, patience and love, and feeling them, in a virtuous circle. Being able to comfort and reassure him, just by sitting quietly with him in the same room. Feeling his restless little body relaxing and getting floppy as he sits on my lap. Surprisingly lucid conversations with him, in between the screams and yells ('I can do my own medicine with the syringe', 'Duckie doesn't like his head being stroked' Me: 'I'm getting very tired now, I have to go to bed soon' LB: 'Okay, wait til the end of the music, then you go'). Hearing people walking past on the street and distant car doors slamming, in the general quiet. That sense of being awake while most people are asleep. Memories of all the months and years of being up with my children in the night when they were younger. It was hell at the time but not without moments of exactly this sweetness, as I know I Iogged here at the time.
Projecting calm, patience and love, and feeling them, in a virtuous circle. Being able to comfort and reassure him, just by sitting quietly with him in the same room. Feeling his restless little body relaxing and getting floppy as he sits on my lap. Surprisingly lucid conversations with him, in between the screams and yells ('I can do my own medicine with the syringe', 'Duckie doesn't like his head being stroked' Me: 'I'm getting very tired now, I have to go to bed soon' LB: 'Okay, wait til the end of the music, then you go'). Hearing people walking past on the street and distant car doors slamming, in the general quiet. That sense of being awake while most people are asleep. Memories of all the months and years of being up with my children in the night when they were younger. It was hell at the time but not without moments of exactly this sweetness, as I know I Iogged here at the time.