Just as the Sun Was Rising
A camera couldn’t have captured the image: a small person, huddled just inside the door of a dim bedroom under a red flannel sheet. Sound asleep.
“Mommy?” he says when he wakes. Then his face crumples as he remembers. “Mommy, it was too late.”
I know what this means: time to clean the boy up before preschool. I’ll change his sheets later.
Vaguely I wonder why he didn’t come get help in the night, rather than sleeping on the floor. It is only after the morning rush that I think back on that scene. He slept near the door, not beside his bed. The sheet was draped halfway across the room toward the bed. And then I understand.
He was coming — sheet clutched around his shoulders — to find a grownup. And was so tired, he lay down where he was and went back to sleep before he could open the door.