David and Mary have a dream. A dream of taking a nap together, snuggled beneath a shared blanket, heads laid side by side on a single Lightening McQueen pillow.
(This is what we call around here "a bad idea.")
Each day around one o'clock, Mary and David, who have until this point spent the day annoying the snot out of each other, suddenly become all hugs and loves and giggles and snuggles. They climb onto David's bed, and, glued together with mutual adoration and strong embraces, they stare up at me longingly. Those beautiful eyes, two brown and two blue, plead, "Don't separate us. Please, please, mother dearest, don't force us apart. It will break our heart."
How my own heart melts. But not so much that my powers of reasoning are handicapped. I know it's a bad idea. I know that a nap together would be no nap at all. In less time than I could draw the curtain, their affection would deteriorate into eye-pokes and rib-jabs. But the idea, as bad as it is, is so sweet...
And I wonder if they remember.
I wonder if they remember all those naps the three of us took together on that bed. David, scrunched against the wall, with me precariously balanced on the edge of the mattress, while Mary, just weeks old, lay between us, delicately cradled in my arm. How did all of us manage to sleep in such an arrangement? Yet we did it, day after day. Do they remember those quiet afternoons, the two of them (and me too) pressed together on the bed? Do they remember how happy they were when Mary joined our family, and they were reunited again? Do they remember that they had recognized each other? Are they yearning for the peace of the past?
Or is their afternoon ploy yet another passive-aggressive, manipulative attempt to postpone nap time?
I suspect it's the latter.
But I can hope. (David and Mary aren't the only ones who can have a dream.)
