An Invitation

I received this sweet little invitation on Monday from Miss Maya as she asked me early-on that evening if I would like to come upstairs and sleep with her, in her bed, in her room. She also wanted to know too what time, exactly, I was going to be going to bed that night. Why that was important to her, I'm still not sure, but I told her the truth, that I really didn't know what time I'd probably be going to bed except that it most likely would be late.

But, she's fairly used to my comings and goings here and I think, I'm pretty sure, she was already aware of the fact that Gram is a major night owl and rarely do I fall into bed until at least 2 a.m. and often it is more like 4 a.m, sometimes even later than that too. It varies, for sure.

On Monday, when she invited me to come sleep with her though, she also asked me if I knew where her bedroom is and then, proceeded to give me instructions as to how to find it and identify it so I didn't make a mistake and end up in Kurt's room instead of hers.


What? Do I know where her room is?

I told her I was pretty sure I knew which room was hers and that I could find it with no problem.

I definitely should know which room in this old house is hers considering the fact that it is the very room where I was born, a little over 66 years ago now! And, it is also the room where I slept -with my Mom -for most of the first 13-14 years of my life too!

About the only big change there from then to now is a little bit of remodeling -new windows and a larger closet, moved from one side of the room to the other, over the years. That and the things that Maya also called my attention to - her room is the one with half a door to it!

Yes, the door into her room was cut in half a few years back -under instructions by her Mom and her Dad did the work. It also has a latch on the outside of the door too to keep small children from leaving the room at times -a few years back -and prevent them from falling down the stairs should they get up and wander about in the middle of the night.

Well, unfortunately, Monday night came and went and I fell asleep in the chair and eventually moved from the chair to the sofa to finish sleeping there. The reason I didn't venture up the stairs to her room that night was when I awoke from sleeping in the chair, both my knees were kind of in a locked-up phase -which happens to me from time to time -and cramping badly (don't you just love some of the attributes of arthritis) so the furthest I could hobble was from the chair to the sofa. The thought of bending those knee joints enough to crawl up the stairs and then, down the hall to her room was out of the question for me at that point in time.

Not one to be denied what she wants though, on Tuesday evening, Maya came and handed me a piece of paper with some important printing on it -done in red marker too -so I would be sure to see it and read it.

I was going to scan this paper, this invitation as it turned out to be, into the computer but alas, something is haywire right now with my printer/scanner, in that it won't even turn on and I can't figure out what apparently is not connected to the power supply there, so I couldn't do that and then post the picture of this paper here for all to see.

However, I can tell you what it said.

"Will you sleep with me in my bed, tonight? Maybe?"

I have no idea what possessed her to revert back to sleeping upstairs on Monday in her bed, again -since she had been back to being my bed buddy in my bed, in my tiny, cold room on the first floor now for at least the past 3-4 weeks. And why she felt the need to invite me to sleep with her -in her room too -was a mystery as well.

But anyway, Tuesday night, I did manage to get myself up the steps and to her room around 2 a.m.

And what happened when I got there?

She was over on what was supposed to be my side of the bed so I figured, no problem there, I'll just tell her to scoot over a bit -like I would do to her when I would go to bed with her in my single bed -and she would slide over like she has always done when sleeping with me in my room.

Boy, did I get a surprise there!

She wouldn't move!!!

I could not get that child to roll over, to slide over, to scoot over -none of those things!

So, in order to get into bed with her -and I wasn't about to try to crawl over her - I had to sit on this tiny bit of room she left me on the edge of the bed and then try to pick up and lift her -all 65 pounds of this kid -over to the other side of the bed!

And let me tell you this, that's sure as hell something I don't want to do again -or at least not very damned often anyway!

But apparently, my going upstairs and sleeping with her was a really good move on my part as yesterday morning, when she got up and was getting ready for school, it was about all she wanted to talk about to her mother.

And Mandy said she told her that Gram had slept with her too in a very hushed and quite reverent tone too!

I'm quite impressed by that.

I had no idea that a simple act like that could produce such a response from a 7-year-old!