Monday, June 19, 2006
Bedtime
Here in the middle of imagination, right in the middle of my head,
I close my eyes and my room's not my room and my bed isn't really my bed.
I close my eyes and discvoer things that are sometimes strange and new.
And the most impossible thoughts I think have a way of being true. ...
For me it's usually getting up and leaving my bed to write. In that drifty drousy dreamy not-awake-not-asleep state stories come, so I leave my bed. But it isn't that way for kids.
From downstairs we can hear them, but usually don’t go up and say anything unless somebody gets too loud. But that doesn’t happen too often now that they’re getting older. So from downstairs you might here an explosion or a song or a giggle. Every once in awhile you might hear footsteps, but these were highlights in an imagination reel uncoiling.
Ms. 8 always uses here lights-on time to read a few pages, then she might grab her toy microphone and do a little show. Mr. 7 typically pulls out his art set or a construction toy, a half-contraption or partial metropolis typically graces his floor as he drifts off. Mr. 5 will wade through the rubble of his room until he finds the one Power Ranger or Hot Wheel or book he needs to plop on his bed and vanish into his netherworld until we come to tuck them in. It’s good to spend some time with yourself each day, so the kids do this before they go to sleep each night.
But turning off the lights and tucking them in is only intermission. That’s when the fun begins. When they know they can’t … shouldn’t … don’t really want to at the ends of these summer days … get out of bed and wander their rooms for toys. They drift off slowly, maybe having a conversation with Hermione in the girls restroom, hoping Moaning Myrtle won’t hear. In the Bionicle cluttered bed across the hall he might be talking himself through his Seisan Kata, adding a few Marvel Comic sound effects as he gets a good one in on a sparring opponent. Or, in that oasis from Rubbleville, he might be bashing his guitar at the end of Baba O’Reilly … or Rangering up and saving the world.
When you’re little your bed is yours. You don’t imagine that, someday, you’ll want to welcome some one else in. But what you do imagine keeps the creepy things away until tomorrow. What you do imagine makes this little corner of the world all your own … and one of the safest you’ll ever know.
One of our former students has an older brother who sings and writes songs, and is now trying to get a label interested. He wrote an adorable song about monsters under his bed and how he wished they weren't so scared of him and would talk to him. It was a nice twist on an old tale.
Thanks for the kind words on my blog. By the way, our school year starts just after Labour Day, and last 194 days (including the PD days, so about 185 teaching days). We get out this year on the 28th.
-AM
The last paragraph was the best!
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