At Least They're Committed

As a little girl living in Ann Arbor it pissed me off to no end that during the summer, when it was light outside well past 9 p.m., I was still sent to bed at 8.

The ceiling in my room at 3369 Beaumont was sloped, so the open window was low, with its sill at the level of my twin bed. I used to harrumph and pout and look out the screen at the thick green lawn, the playhouse and, of course, the big rock in the backyard and wonder why I couldn’t still be outside playing among them. I would sigh deeply and smell the fresh-cut grass, the humid air and the lilac bushes and bemoan my miserable fate and the horrific injustice of an early bedtime.

(Considering how terrified of the dark I was, one would think I’d be happy to try to sleep before the corpses and ghosts awakened in the night, but I don’t suppose those things occur to a 4- to 6-year-old living for the moment.)

It’s now nearly 8:30 p.m., what would have been a half hour past bedtime. My flight leaves at 8 a.m. and I am about to crawl into my bed and look toward my large window at mattress level and be little again, only this time — while watching the light fade to dusk, listening to the birds quarrel and smelling the budding leaves in the dry air — not minding it near so much. No, not minding it at all. Sleep tight.