What do you dream about?

When you dream,

what do you dream about?

When you dream,

what do you dream about?

Do you dream about

music or mathematics

or planets too far for the eye?

Do you dream about

Jesus or quantum mechanics

or angels who sing lullabies?

His fontanelle pulses with lives that he's lived

With memories he'll learn to ignore

And when it is closed, he already knows

he's forgotten all he knew before

But when sleep sets in

history begins

But the future will win

My hip joints ache every morning. I wake up with a deep burning, especially on the left, that's almost unbearable and totally unrelenting. It's a product of sleeping still and on my side, balanced short of the rescue position with one leg fully flopped over the other and half my chest buried in the mattress. Because that chest is what has to remain accessible for my little one sleeping next to me, mouth moving in the night-lighted room, looking for some more dream fuel. Looking for me.

I'm not sure if I ever said, "my kid won't co-sleep with me." I know I made fun of the term "co-sleep" generally. I still think it sounds stupid. Like "babywearing." But I don't argue with the positive benefits (practical or otherwise) of babywearing and I'm beginning to embrace the bed sharing version of co-sleeping.

It's probably cognitive disonance in action. My hip hurts and I wake up all the time, but look at her sleeping there. All the granola hippy tree hugging endorphiny reasons to let her sleep next to me, those must be reason enough or I'd kick her back to her crib.

A few nights ago, around 3:30, I was awake. Not awakened, just awake. She slept quietly next to me. She wasn't eating, wasn't latched. Her face was relaxed, her hands open, one above her head, one on her belly. She was peace personified. And I thought watching the cats sleep was relaxing.

She wasn't worried about eating or feeding someone. She wasn't worried about her body or her job or her finances. She wasn't worried about gravity. She wasn't dreaming about bad things because she doesn't know them yet. She wasn't worried about getting to work on time or when she'd see someone again. She wasn't worried about anything. She just slept.

And looked beautiful. Oh the beauty of her. Her eyelashes, her sweet lips, her cheeks (plump doesn't begin to describe them). Her wispy hair growing longer every day, down across her forehead, color yet to be determined definitely.

So I stared at this gorgeous sleeping thing for a while. I don't know how long, but a good, long, while. It needed to be done. And each night since I've pulled her into bed with me hoping for another such moment because I'm not sure there's a higher virtue than appreciating beauty wherever and whenever you find it. And I find it nightly sleeping next to me.