I was pooped, plain and simple. A young mother, occupied with a household of four active little ones that I’d birthed in a six-year span, I felt my world close in on me one dreary Sunday afternoon.
“I just need to sleep,” I whined to my husband. “Sleep will cure me. I crave it. I need it. I deserve it. I just want a nice, long…”
“Consider it done,” he interjected.
“…uninterrupted nap.”
His eyebrows darted upward as he glanced pointedly at the rain pounding on the patio. He gestured at our housebound children.
“Uninterrupted? Really?” He shook his head and gave a dry laugh. “With this crew, that’s asking a lot.”
If it hadn’t been as tired as the rest of me, I’m sure my jaw would have clenched. Instead, I merely repeated myself, tossing the word a bit desperately over my shoulder as I scurried upstairs to bed.
“Uninterrupted. I want an UN-interrupted nap.”
I fluffed my pillow, pulled a warm afghan to my chin, and curled into a ball. My eyes had barely drifted shut when I heard my redheaded toddler holler from the stairway.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
I pulled the afghan over my head.
“Mommy? Where are you?”
“I should have known this wouldn’t work,” I grouched to myself and heaved a sigh. But before I could toss back the covers and drag myself from bed, my husband manfully shouldered his mantle of responsibility.
“Pssst. Koy, come back down here,” he half whispered, although he knew I couldn’t possibly be asleep already. “Mommy’s napping. If there’s something you want, son, you need to ask Daddy instead. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Koy, his two-year-old voice loud and agreeable.
Satisfied, I closed my eyes again.
“Well, then,” my husband’s voice rose as he prompted, a bit impatiently, “tell me what it is you want.”
“Mommy,” said Koy, plaintively. “I want my mommy.”
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