I go to sleep when my kid does, around 8:00pm. I am the only parent in a hundred mile radius that goes to sleep before 11:00 or so. At least that's how it feels. Other parents talk about T.V. shows, private time with their partners, going to the movies. I am sleeping: deeply, warmly, satisfyingly asleep by 8:00pm, having read to my 5-year-old son three or four books, turned out his nightstand light, told him a rambling story made up on the spot (our ritual), stayed "one more minute," given the last kiss, noserub and ribcracking hug, then left him to his warm and lovely blankets and pillows while I seek my own. I sink into a deep sleep almost instantly, though sometimes there is a pretense of reading half a paragraph before my eyes are closing, my breath slowing, my consciousness slipping away into another place.
Then, and this is the beauty part, I wake up, alert and alive, around 4:00 a.m. In the winter it looks and feels like the middle of the night, which adds to its magic: I feel, often, like a little kid, staying up to watch for reindeer on the roof. I make coffee, I eat something -- granola and yogurt, fruit, something fast. Already the minutes are ticking away. I snuggle down on the couch with coffee and book, or notebook and pen, and my psyche -- which really means soul -- sighs with tranquility: here I am, it says, acknowledging my external self with all its responsibilities, grateful for having been acknowledged in its turn. Sometimes I am reading; other times I am writing. In either case, being my fullest, truest self, skating on words, flying on phrases, language keeping me aloft like a wind current. On a good day I have two hours of flight before a little voice calls from the hall outside his bedroom, "Mommy? morningtime cuddle?" And when it does, I am ready to welcome him back, along with my external self and all of her responsibilities.

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