It’s been a few months since we used The Mothership because it’s so darn cold up in Maryland, but with the cold beginning to break and Richard’s condition worsening, we decided to do a quarantine and bring the kids up for a visit before things get too bad.
This morning I was laying in back of the camper, cocooned in my sleeping bag and debating whether was worth going into the house to pee and have coffee and write a little before everyone woke up, or if I should just burrow back into my bag and sleep more.
Then the camper shook and Walker wandered back to my room, blinking. “Oh… you actually slept out here?” he said, because apparently me saying goodnight to him the last two nights wasn’t clue enough that was actually sleeping ten feet from him.
I moved my glasses from the mattress beside me, saying, “Mmhmm. Mom and I told you I would. We didn’t want you to get lonely at night.”
He flopped on the bed and began to fold himself into a series of improbable shapes while saying, “But I have my sister here.”
“Ah. So you don’t need a parent nearby when you sleep anymore?”
He sat up and screwed his face into a variety of shapes, then made that odd I’m-about-to-tell-a-joke-but-I’m-eleven-and-emotions-are-hard-to-process croak he does sometimes. Then he shrugged and said, “You can sleep in the house. I’ll allow it.”
He immediately rolled off the bed, stumbled into the living room, and crawled back under his blanket. He was snoring again before I stopped giggling.