Goodnight Moon

I know Goodnight Moon.

I read it to my babies, first Kyle, then Kyle and Brady together, then just Brady. Every day. Sometimes multiple times a day, as the story and the cadence of my voice when I read it became part of their Go to Sleep routine.

I can sit here and tell you the story of Goodnight Moon right now, on demand. The great green room. The telephone. The quiet old lady whispering “Hush.”

I am pretty sure, in the haze of my grandmother’s last days alive, that I recited Goodnight Moon to her, just to keep talking to her. Just to keep my voice going to hold her attention, her tenuous connection to my world.

In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
Kyle, 10 months

Goodnight Moon enthralled Kyle. As a tiny baby, he watched the colors and shapes in the pages of the book, and helped me turn the pages as soon as he knew how.

Brady tried to eat the book. Several times. But the story kept him engaged and helped him quiet down. It was an indicator to my children that naptime or bedtime was coming. That their bodies were getting ready for rest.

I don’t often read to the boys anymore. They can read on their own, and they do. Most nights, I snap at them to get their pajamas on, brush their teeth, get to bed, while I bustle around preparing my own self for bed, since I go to work now, early in the mornings.

But sometimes, even now at 12 and 10, they still have trouble falling asleep. I sit at their bedside stroking their foreheads. I talk to them softly. I sing the lullaby to them that I sang when they were babies.

They are all long limbs and sweat and stinky feet, but when I break out Goodnight Moon, they are my babies again.