It’s after nine and too late to start another movie. Six-year-old Thing2’s dance has devolved from frenzied leaping and spinning into climbing onto and sliding off of the couch, but he is not tired. The Big Guy puts in the Sound of Music, fast-forwarding to the end of the intermission.
The music swells, and Thing2 twirls on the floor before climbing up to snuggle between me and his older brother who has sandwiched himself next to the Big Guy on a sofa meant to hold three thinner adults. There’s another slide-and-climb maneuver before Maria is told to go climb her mountains, but by the time she returns to the von Trapp embrace, Thing2 has settled into mine, his eyes closing for a minute.
“I’m not tired,” he breathlessly exclaims through what I could have sworn was a snore as he shakes himself alert. He explains he meant to laugh and then sneezed. There’s another slide-and-climb. Baroness von Schrader is dumping the captain about the same time Thing2 begins examining my hand that’s holding his smaller one. Then with a burst of energy, he rolls from sofa to momma, clinging to me like a baby chimp. “I’m not tired,” he mumbles as he closes his eyes and, looking more two than six, finally surrenders.
Maria is singing in the background about nothing coming from nothing, and, as I savor this moment that is becoming all-to-rare and wonder what the heck I ever did in my own wicked past to have earned it in the first place, I am anything but tired.