My Heroes

Yesterday, I was shockingly tired. It took me the better part of the day and into the evening to realize that I was impatient and droopy because I'd accidentally eschewed caffeine in the morning. I only mention my lack of mental acuity because I went to bed at 8:30, read for awhile, then turned out the light. I was having trouble drifting off to meaningful slumber because my rock star of a two-year-old is still keeping her rock star hours - napping in the afternoon but then refusing sleep until after ten. She goes to bed at eight with her sister, but reads, turns on light, sings and generally occupies herself and bothers the rest of her family for two hours before she'll commit to sleep.

And as it turns out, lucky for us. I hear Chris in the bathroom around 9:30, brushing his teeth and in between slurps threatening Rose with desperate consequences if she leaves the room or turns on the light again. He brings down the hammer, demands acknowledgment of said consequences, namely losing Kitty, then everything is silent. All the while Harper sleeps on.

It was in this newly found peace that Chris comes to bed, gets his clothes together for the morning, and listens to me moan and groan as I'm now in my second hour of interrupted dozing. Then, he shuts the door and....the door handle comes off in his hand. "Shit,", I hear him say across the dark room. The door handle has been coming off a bit lately, so I'm not alarmed, hoping against hope that this event, like so many others in the evening, will be a short interruption followed by more sleep. Wrong. Chris can't reattach, and he can't open the door. The reality of the situation hits us; we are stuck in our second floor bedroom (wishing I'd bought that fire ladder now), our only tool a pair of tweezers, our only hope a boogery two-year-old who's just been told that if she leaves her bed, her room......her consequences would be dire. Nice.

So we yell out to her.


"Rosie? Rosie, can you come here? Rose? No really Rosie, you can get up now. Mom and Dad are in trouble. We need your help."

I could just see her sitting in her bed, in disbelief. "Maybe a trick," she muses, "Something to test my resolve? Ah, cunning parents, I shall not answer. They test me.....artfully. I was told that silence was my only path this evening, the path to sleep, to righteousness, to maintain rights to Kitty, the yin to my yang, the love of my life and the key to my security day and night. I shall hold to the path."

Five minutes of coaxing later, we convince her to come and try the door. The handle remains intact on their side, our only hope of escape before dismantling the door with our teeth or yelling from our window for a friendly neighbor to call 911. She tries the door again and again, to no avail. "It's weally, weally hard. I can't do it", she repeats again and again. So, Chris and I think again.

"Rose, can you please go wake up Sissy? We need you to go wake up your sister, okay?"

"Okay," she answers doubtfully. Waking up her sister is yet another verboden activity abandoned as her parents yell from the other side of a curiously closed door. So she ambles to their room or it sounds like ambling - I can't see her. A few beats of silence then, "Sissy, wake up now." Nothing. Chris and I are laughing, uncertainty tinging the appreciation of our charming young rescuer and the ridiculouslessness of our situation.

"Rosie, are you on the bed? Get up on the bed and tell her to wake up."

"Okay," doubtfully again. Another few beats of silence. "Sissy, please wake up now. She's still sleeping," she yells back to us.

"Keep trying Rose, keep trying to wake her up. Rosie, are you still trying?"

"I'm still trying. She's still sleeping."

I've never tried to wake Harper up in the middle of her night. I read a study once where they tested smoke alarms on kids and between the ages of five and fifteen, the kids don't even roll over. Their brains are so tired, so focused on recovering and rebuilding from a day's worth of learning, that they can't even hear a siren two feet from their ears. These thoughts are bouncing around in my brain as I listen to Rose's best efforts at waking her immovable sibling. We sit, restless, strategizing about what to do, how to move the sleeping mountain so that we might have a chance of opening the door with six-year-old strength - our last, best hope.

"Tickle her, Rosie."
"Jump on the bed, Rosie."
"Rose, jump on her."

Seriously, we tried everything. I thought about dumping water on her head, then dismissed the idea. If she were this tired, this out of it, Rosie might drown her before she woke up. Ten minutes later, after jumping, ticking, slapping, yelling in her face, the beauty finally woke up. We all yelled in relief, Rose especially. Harper came to the door, eyes half-mast, and opened it with little effort. I scooped her up and declared them both heroes of the night. We laughed, we rejoiced, we regaled Harper with all they things that Rose had done to her over the past ten minutes, none of which she believed. Then, within minutes, we were all fast asleep, even Rose, who, no doubt, will interpret this latest experience as just and proper evidence for keeping her late hours. And really who am I to say? We might be stuck in the bedroom still if our little firefighter were a better sleeper or more compliant. Chris and I have never had to call on the girls to help us before, not in any meaningful or necessary way, but it's nice to know that even at two and six, they have considerable gifts in a tight squeeze, even when it's late, we're tired and everything seems "weally, weally hard."