Oct 20 2008
Manic Monday: Bite
Prompt by Mo at Manic Monday .
The bite of cold air pierced my spine as I stood at the bathroom doorway watching a silent child staring back at me. He took a drink of water and then waited. I knew the look on his face, calculating, looking around me toward my bedroom.
Oh no you don’t, mister, I thought. I wrapped an arm around his shoulder to lead him back to his own room, but he tried to dodge. But I’d anticipated the reaction, so I got a grip on him and got him back into his room. He promptly curled into a ball on the floor, not wanting to get back into his own bed. It was 1:30.
Got him back to bed, still freezing without my robe on, and he didn’t want the light off. I learned that the stupid CFC bulb we put in his ceiling light doesn’t work on a dimmer, so I plugged in an extra night light, told Gus to go back to sleep, and got back into my own cooling bed.
I should have been glad - he woke me from a nightmare about water mains all over New York City breaking and causing massive flooding. If I’d stayed asleep any longer, there would have been a tidal wave for sure. That’s what happens when your downstairs bathroom springs a leak just before dinner.
I lay in bed, listening to the thumping of my own heartbeat, not soothing, just loud, and eventually drifted back to something resembling sleep. And wouldn’t you know it? I wouldn’t have expected inspiration to bite me in the brain stem at that hour, but it did. It was a weird stream of consciousness thing going on, but I came to the conclusion that Gus’s sleep problems started about 6 months ago - when I changed his room around! Duh! Of course that would have disturbed him! If this sounds like middle-of-the-night brilliance, also consider that I started thinking that I’d arranged the furniture in a way that didn’t work with feng shui. It was 2 a.m.; cut me some slack. So, I decided that if I am ever going to get a full night’s sleep again, I will have to put the room back to its original state. Then I went back to sleep.
For half an hour.
I heard a door open then slam shut again.
Damn.
The light was on and he was huddled back in the corner on the floor.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
“Yes.” Talking was good; now we could get somewhere. “It was about a man with a sting ray tail for a face.”
Uh huh. I’ve often heard that Aspies don’t lie. Someone should tell Gus this. It’s not that he doesn’t lie, he just really stinks at it. I knew he was making up Sting Ray Face by the little half smirk at the right side of his mouth.
I coaxed him back to bed and then asked, “Would you feel better if we moved your room back the way it was?”
His face was a sun rising over the mountaintops. “Yes,” he breathed in relief. Who knew? I promised to do it today. And then I was graced with three hours of unbroken rest.
To an Aspie, change is not always good, even 6 months later.
Gayle: Thanks for the comment. I think lots of kids would be disturbed by rearranging the room; not sure if they’d still be disturbed after such a long time, but perhaps.
Corina: The room is now back almost the way it was. When he comes home I’ll let him decide where to put everything else.
Marla: I don’t know why it took me so long to think of this - must have been the sleep deprivation
awww poor little guy. I love change but when I do move my furniture it keeps me up as well. I lay in bed looking around at how everything is different because I’m so excited and happy that there was a change. =)