Wake up call

03 August 2008

This morning I woke up at two minutes to six, as I do every morning—it’s possibly the only thing I learned in school that I have not yet forgotten, but instead of rolling over and back to sleep, I shook myself awake. Something was clinging to my ankle. In the half-lucid haze of waking I muddled my dream about street sweepers with the smell of unfamiliar sheets—then I remembered.

I’m playing mom again this weekend for Chubby, Ty-ty, Sadie and Matthew and Allie. The hand in my bed was Sadie’s. Halfway through last night’s Broadway production I called Bedtime! (“You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll refuse to wear pajamas! A 2½ hour smash-hit for the whole family!”) Sadie announced she would be sleeping in my bed. Sure. Just go to bed. I was busy wrestling a screaming Chubby onto the changing table.

When the final curtain closed on the five sleeping kids, Ty-ty’s bloody nose had been staunched, Allie had called her mother 5 times to say goodnight, Matthew had moved all his sleeping things into Ty-ty’s room, Chubby had been rocked to sleep, twice, and Sadie was sleeping, sprawled across the bed, on both pillows, snoring. As I curled up at the foot of the bed, trying to burry my head in the covers, Allie came in, dragging her sleeping bag and pillow. She’s 12, but even 12-year-olds can be scared to sleep alone.

But I was the only one awake at 5:58 am: lying upside down in bed listening to the quiet breathing of early-morning sleeping. I carefully pulled my ankle loose and opened wide the bedroom’s French doors: the early, fresh cool sifted into the room and I lay back down. I must have fallen asleep then because it was nearly an hour later when my dream (that lanky street sweeper again, and in a Hawaiian-print shirt from the bowling alley?) became entangled with the whining of a fire truck.

Grumble, grumble, EPA! I rolled over and pulled the covers to my ears…

“Fire! Fire!” It was Allie, wide-awake and panicked.

The sirens were still singing out alarum bells, and I realized they were on our street. I sat up, and scanned the room, surprisingly calm for the frantic note I could hear in Allie’s voice. No fire, no smoke, Sadie was still sound asleep, only Allie stood cowering in the middle of the room. She whimpered and looked out the big windows— then I saw it too. Across the backyard and above the neighbor’s roof, dark gray smoke churned into the sky.

Mesmerizing, really—thick air so dirty with fire’s choking vomit, like crumpled velvet draping on the great magnolias that ringed their yard.

“There’s a fire!” Allie was crying now, and I snapped the porch doors closed.

“It’s okay,” I tried to console her, "Do you want to help me check on everyone, make sure they're okay? The firefighters are already there, we're all safe, everything is going to be fine…”

She was, in fact, inconsolable, and preferred to pace the room, alternately crying and staring at the smoke in silence.

When the dark gray finally turned to white steam, I coaxed her away from the window,

“Allie, it’s going to be okay.”

“I’m just so scared!”

“Of what, honey?”

She shook her head,

“I’m just scared!”

I didn’t know what to say.

Welcome, welcome Sabbath morning.