Half past eleven. We return from the guests. Given yesterday’s daylight saving time, a one-year-old child should have been in bed for three and a half hours. The child stands on my knees and examines the world around him with interest through the windshield of the car, joyfully commenting on what he saw. All attempts to put him in a child seat are abandoned: we, as always, came to a compromise, which consists in the fact that I strictly comply with all his requirements, for example, I don’t even stutter about the child seat, and he, for this, screams , but not very loudly, just to train your voice …
The child falls asleep, and remains standing. He just leans back against my chest and goes limp. But it is possible to transfer it to a lying position only the third time: the built-in gyroscope activates a sound signal in the child, bypassing the brain. A kind of tumbler on the contrary: as soon as the child is in a horizontal position, the mouth and eyes open automatically …
But the accumulated fatigue makes itself felt and the child is no longer able to resist sleep: his head falls on my arm, his legs stretch out by themselves. So we get out of the car, go up to the apartment, enter the nursery. Parting with outerwear is relatively easy: the child hates it so much that his own reflexes help him to throw it off, he does not need to wake up for this.
I put the baby in bed and cover with a blanket. No reaction. The child continues to sleep. A crazy thought flashes through the brain that today we will do without an hour and a half ritual of falling asleep, including crawling and rocking the crib, a cry informing the world that the child wants to sleep and falling asleep invariably in his arms.
The first timid step towards the door. Second. The doorknob is already within reach, one more movement…
— Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!
The child is standing in bed, holding on to the bars and crying bitterly. In the dark, it is not clear what internal spring brought him to a vertical position. The child has a tragedy: the world was stolen from him. After all, his last memory was cars moving along the road and playfully blinking their headlights or stops — and then suddenly it was completely dark.
I take it in my hands. The child instantly falls silent and clings to his chest: today he is kind and agrees to exchange the lost world for warm hugs. It was always incomprehensible to me how he could sleep when his back rested on one of my arms and his head was supported by the other. The manufacturer of the patented orthopedic mattress assured me for a long time that the child would be so happy with him that he would not be able to part with him for a long time. It seems that he obviously didn’t take something into account, while developing it, it seems that it was necessary to build in a couple of tubercles …
After waiting for a deep, even breathing, I again put the child in the crib. Silent. I release one hand … It turned out. I’m pulling the second one. At the last moment, the child grabs my hand and presses it tightly to the chest with both of his arms and lies down on top. Any attempt to pull your hand out of bed is immediately stopped by crying, crying so bitterly that it seems that you are not taking away the hand from the child, but tearing out his soul … Well, on the other hand, it is even flattering that he considers your hand a worthy replacement for the whole world …
There is nothing to do: I sit down on a chair, always prudently being near the bed, my eyes close by themselves …
I wake up feeling my ear being pulled. Face to face with me stands, in full growth, a child and smiles at me from ear to ear. He, in general, did not want anything special, he just had to tell me that the sun had risen and it was time to go play …