Goodnight, childhood
When I was a child and my mother put me to bed I had a conundrum. We always said to one another “love you, good night!”. But if she said it first, I hated to say it last and hear my voice die silent in the dark hallway, unacknowledged; if I said it first and she said it last, then I felt as though I had to reply lest she feel the same emptiness I felt when the roles were reversed. So we compromised: we went at the same time: we’d count down, “1, 2, 3, love you! 1, 2, 3, good night!” every night she put me to bed.
It must have stopped when I went away to boarding school (I was 14), but I don’t know whether we continued up until then or not. In any case it’s been almost a decade (!) since I went to boarding school, so at least a decade has passed since I last said “1, 2, 3, love you!”.
Tonight I’m getting ready to go out again (I said I would, and I think it’ll be fun, but I’m tired. I should have taken a nap this afternoon, but I was “working”) and my mother and step-father are preparing to leave for Minnesota (my step-sister’s pregnacy is complicated, so she’s delivering the baby at a hospital in Minnesota where she has access to the needed specialists). They go tomorrow morning. I’m going to miss my mother while she’s gone. I spoke to her in my room tonight and I couldn’t stand to let her leave. I felt as though there was something I needed to say/hear and I didn’t know how to ask.
Once I apologized to a friend of mine; I didn’t know what to say but I had to say something because she had just apologized to me (you’re getting the end of the story here, not the beginning) for something I didn’t know I hadn’t forgiven her for; when she said it I suddenly had already forgiven her. So I said, “I’m sorry that I haven’t always been gentle to you” and I saw in her eyes that she didn’t know that she needed to hear me say that so she could have already forgiven me.
I felt the same with my mother’s wish goodnight: I didn’t know that I had already forgotten the rhythm of my life. But if we do not forget, we can not remember; and remembering is the sweetest pain.
