Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Coming home was an odd feeling, anticlimactic in many ways.

The house was cleaner than it had been in months.  The boys' beds were stripped and Tiernen had started washing the linens.  I brought the toddler bed and mattress that W had used up to the attic.  I put new linen on the crib.  The drawers were empty.  The toys were all put away, awaiting the next phone call.

Darryl was working nights, so Tiernen and I went out to dinner.  It was the first time in months I hadn't had to bring a diaper bag with me.  

I called Erin, told her how it went, and went over her house to visit Bram.  I told her we would need to "borrow" him a lot now that the house was empty again.  She laughed and said we were welcomed to have Bram time whenever we wanted.  He was one now, walking up a storm, and was a big boy, so different from the baby who had come to us eight months before.

I called Darryl on his lunch break and told him how it went.  He asked me if I was sad and I told him, honestly, that I was not. I was just really, really tired.  

"Then go to bed," he said.

And I did.

I slept straight for the next seventeen, count 'em, seventeen, hours.  When I woke up, my body was sore from being in the same position for so many hours.  I got up, ate something, took a shower, and went back to bed.

There was no pressing reason to stay up.  It was early in the school year and there was nothing to grade yet.

I went back to bed and slept for a long, long time.  

I did not, however, feel rested.