Alternately titled: Payback is a Beast

Imagine this scene: You’re lying on a cloud buried beneathe warm, fluffy blankets made of the finest wool. The dark air around you is cool as the nighttime air slow begins to burn off. The sun hasn’t graced the sky with her rays  just yet and you relish that dreamy moment between sleep and consciousness. It is peaceful. It is comfortable. It is blissful.

Now imagine that a spindly, gangly child jumps on the cloud with you. He burrows beneathe your blankets, bursting through your warm cocoon with his icy feet and shivering body. He tucks his toes underneath your legs causing you to yelp in surprise and yanking you, rather rudely, out of dreamland in one fell swoop.

Then he turns on the lamp and your eyes, still not fully prepared for wakefulness and accustomed only to the serenity of the dark, go blind. The light pierces through the room with such forcefulness that you wonder if perhaps you will ever be able to see again.

After this he turns to you with his eight year old morning breath and begins talking. Not whispering, mind you, but full out gabbing as if he’s in Grand Central Station during rush hour. Your senses are overwhelmed what with the light and the noise and the icy feet underneath.

Imagine he pulls out a photo album that he wants to look at with you and he wants to discuss every photo from seven years ago down to the very detail.

“I was cute wasn’t I?”

“Oh look how small I was!”

“What were we doing here?”

“How much did you love me then?”

And you want to engage, you really do.  But you’re blind…and deaf…and paralyzed.

“Mom, open your eyes and look at this one! Wasn’t that fun? Tell me about it?”

You hear him but you don’t compute. Partly because you’re wondering how on Earth it happened that minutes ago you were sleeping on a cloud and now you’re being attacked before the sun is even lighting the sky an early morning grey. Plus, you’re too busy thinking about other things.

You’re dreaming about the coming day when he’s a teenager and rising before the crack of dawn is no longer exciting. He will long to spend a few extra hours in bed, wrapped in his own cocoon of warmth and then?

Then it’s going to be your turn.

*insert manaical laugh here*

You think of that moment when you can flip on his light and start chattering incessantly about how much you miss him being little and what a sweet baby he was and look at these old pictures, honey!

Maybe you’ll want to stick your icy feet under his covers and watch him gasp and try and get away. Although he’ll probably be bigger than you so that may not be wise, but you could at least yank off the covers and flip on the lamp sitting beside his bed causing light to pierce his eyeballs like hot daggars. You know…just for kicks.

This is all hypothetical, of course.

Or maybe it’s not.

Truthfully, as you envision this blessed payback you know that in reality you will likely never have the opportunity, or the guts, to be so cruel to your child. As the fog of sleep slowly lifts, you change your tactic and instead of dreaming of the day when you can exact sweet revenge, you instead begin praying with an urgency that you haven’t felt or experienced in a long, long time.

Lord, give this boy a child just like him some day.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go have another cup of coffee. After all, I was up before the sun this morning…