AFRAID AT NIGHT

Dear Spike:

It used to be, when it was bedtime but you just weren't ready for sleep, you'd hide under you covers, kick up your feet to make a little tent, and sing songs to an audience of stuffed animals until you were finally tired enough to slumber.

But lately you've been having trouble entertaining yourself in your room in the dark, and so you end up at our bedroom door — a blanket in one arm and a stuffed bear in the other — and plead to sleep in our bed.

"I'm scared," you say.

"What are you scared of?" I ask.

You pick something. The animals perched on your shelf. The elephants painted on your wall. The drapes hanging over your window.

"That's nothing to be scared of," I say.

"But I'm scared," you say.

And who am I to argue with that?

I tuck you into bed, kiss you on the head, and go back to my room.

Five minutes go by and the process starts all over again, this time with your mother.

I'm not sure why it is that children are so often afraid at night. Perhaps fear of the dark is an evolutionary trait that kept little homo erectus young ones from running off into the jungle after the sunset. Or perhaps it's just another random, unexplainable eccentricity of our species, like ice curling or the Osmond family.

But I do understand. I remember being afraid of the dark, too. And sometimes when I'm locking up the house at night or heading to the kitchen for a midnight snack, I get that frighteningly familiar chill on the back of my neck — and I am briefly reconnected with the way it felt to be very little in a very big, very dark place.

So even though I'll most often send you back to bed and remind you that it is your job to stay there, I'll never be angry at you for this.

Sometimes we feel scared. That's just part of who we are.

Love,
dad