Fears

It's sometimes hard to go to bed. Tonight after Lia had kissed all the girls goodnight, I found myself racing back and forth between Katharine's crib and Eli's bottom bunk in a madcap effort to calm their fears of horrors real and imagined. It began well, with Eli telling me excitedly that she was going to dream tonight, as she had dreamt last night, about dinosaurs fighting and eating. But as Katharine began to cry, I begged Eli to be quiet and go to sleep so Katharine could follow her example. It had cost Lia no little effort to soothe Katharine's fears of "the Beast" and to coax her into bed. I despaired to see Lia's labors about to unravel. But my request crushed Eli's enthusiasm and broke her little heart. She now told me with frowning lips and mournful visage that she had been "scared at family home evening"--so scared, in fact, that she hadn't even shared any announcements during announcements time.

Meanwhile, Katharine's cries rose in a piercing crescendo, so I raced to her to see what could be done. Her problem was that her neck was wet, some drops of water having escaped from the sippy-cup she had been clinging to her chest. I removed the cup, dried her neck with my sleeve, and returned to Eli. Fortunately, Eli's FHE fears were now forgotten, but unfortunately she was now convinced that tonight was going to be a terrible night because she was "going to have no dreams at all." I promised her that if she would close her eyes and go right to sleep she was sure to dream about something, and that in any case she needed to get a good night's sleep so that in the morning we could play and dance and read A Little Princess. This provoked a new lament that we had not read together today. At this point I invoked the nuclear option of explaining things in terms unintelligible, along lines not rational, but in terms so forceful and decisive as to admit of no rejoinder. I tucked her in, kissed her nose, whispered some paternal endearments, and said goodnight. And Eli, her powers of invention now as weary as her four-year-old frame, surrendered to my entreaties and to slumber.