Ernest ate his supper in great contentment at a little table by my
fireplace. The unaccustomed task of cooking it gave me new and vivid
thrills. And the intellectual concentration involved in heating soup
and making toast was so great as to lose me the pleasure of watching
Ernest draw. I had asked him in the morning if he liked to draw. He had
answered in such scorn that I had hastily called in Michelangelo. Now
I placed a pencil and many large sheets of paper negligently near him.
When I brought him his supper, he had covered them all with futuristic
men, houses, and horses. The floor was strewn with his work, and he
was magnificently casting it from him as he attacked these æsthetic
problems with fierce gusto. Only the sight of food quelled his artistic
rage. After supper, however, he did not return to them. Instead, he
became fascinated with the pillows of my couch, and piled them in a
line, with a whistling and shouting as of railroad trains. I wrote a
little, merely to show myself that this business of parenthood need
not devastate one’s life. But I found myself wondering acutely, in the
midst of an eloquent sentence, what time it was healthy for Ernest
to go to bed. I seemed to remember seven--incredible to me, and yet
perhaps meet for a child. It was already seven, but the vigor with
which he rejected my proposal startled me. His amiability all day had
been so irreproachable that I did not wish to strain it now. Yet I was
conscious of an approaching parental crisis. Suppose he did not want to
go to bed at all!
When I next looked up, I found that he had compromised by falling
asleep in a curious diagonal and perilous position across his
pillows--the trainman asleep at the switch. In a position in which
nobody could sleep, Ernest slept with the face of an angel. Complexity!
Only a brute would wake him. Yet how did parents get their children to
bed? And then I thought of the intricacies of his clothes. I touched
him very gently; he jumped at me in a dazed way, with the quaintest,
“Oh, I don’t know what made me go to sleep!” and was off into the big
chair and helpless slumber.
I repented of my brutality. I tried to read, but my parental conscience
again smote me. Ernest looked forlorn and maladjusted, his head
sinking down on his breast. I thought that Ernest would thank me now
for reminding him of his bed. He showed astonishing force of will.
I recoiled from the “I don’t want to go to bed!” which he hurled at
me. I tried reason. I called his attention to his uncomfortableness.
But he was unmoved, and insisted on going to sleep again after every
question. I hardened my heart a little. I saw that stern measures would
have to be adopted, Ernest’s little clothes taken off, Ernest inserted
into his flannel nightgown, and tucked into bed. Yet I had no idea
of the parental technique for such situations. Ernest had been quite
irresponsive to my appeal that all good little boys went to bed at
seven o’clock, and I could think of no further generalizations. Crisis
after so happy a day! Was this parenthood?
The variety of buttons and hooks on Ernest’s outer and inner garments
bewildered me. Ernest’s dead sleepiness made the work difficult. But
finally his little body emerged from the midst, leaving me with the
feeling of one who has taken a watch apart and wonders dismayedly how
he will ever get it together again. Ernest, however, was not inclined
to permit the indignity of this disrobing without bitter protest. When
I urged his coöperation in putting on his nightgown, he became voluble.
The sunniness of his temper was clouded. His tone turned to harsh
bitterness. Little angry tears rolled down his cheeks, and he betrayed
his sense of extreme outrage with an “I don’t _want_ to put on my
nightgown!” hurled at me with so much of moral pain that I was chilled.
But it was too late. I could not unscramble Ernest. With a sinking
heart I had gently to thrust his little arms and legs into the warm
flannel, trundle him over the floor, bitter and sleepily protesting,
roll him into his bed, and cover him up. As he curled and snuggled into
the covers his tears dried as if by magic, the bitterness smoothed out
of his face, and all his griefs were forgotten.