The forever bedtime
I won’t be doing this when he’s 16… I keep telling myself this as I lie there in the dark, eyes open as my youngest, now 5, does his version of ‘trying to get to sleep’. Then whack, I get a hand in the face - wham, a foot in the crotch. “Ouch,” I say. “Sorry Dad,” he says. This is him clumsily reaching out to check I’m still there. He wants me there and I love being there, want to be near him knowing that he won’t want me near him when he is 16… but I am SO bored. I also want to be having a cup of tea, going for a run, I almost want to be doing the washing up. Anything other than lying here every night, bored out of my mind. I tell myself that I won’t be doing this when he’s 16 but, lying there, 16 seems a very, very long way off.