Sally, my granddaughter, is watching Peppa Pig. She’s delightful. ( Sally and Peppa (the British pig) are both delightful. It is the middle of the night. I’m not so delightful.
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Have you ever watched the movie Groundhog Day? I have been here before. God has a sense of humor. I have been here before. This is not my first rodeo. I have been here before. It was a different child but the same situation. I have been here before.
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3:00 a.m. 1986
When Mike, our middle son, was little, he got up EVERY night at about 3 a.m. He was delightful. Awake. Talkative. Loving. WIDE awake. Did I mention he was delightful? And he wasn’t sleepy one little bit.
The two of us would try to be quiet and let Molly (5), baby Danny (1), and Bill (36) sleep.
We would visit. Play.
Then, one night, we wound up watching tv after we stumbled upon the show “The Waltons.” It was a rerun on TBS. And he loved it.
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Our midnight ramblings were streamlined once we found John Boy and the rest of the Walton Clan. He would get me up by asking me what I was doing.....(I was trying to sleep).....and I’d stumble from the bed and head to the living room. We’d settle into the big, old Lazy Boy recliner, wrap up in a blanket and watch the Waltons....every night. EVERY Night. We didn’t miss a night. We watched the Waltons grow up, solve problems, say good night, love each other and become our friends.
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Mike and I looked forward to that quiet time together. The two of us would be together and we enjoyed an hour of pure love. The Waltons taught us a lot about life in the hard scrabble world of a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II.
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But it taught me even more about a little boy who needed some quiet time with his mommy. Mike looked forward to being with me. We would discuss the show, the characters, the story lines and having some time together. At the end of the show, he’d head back to bed with a “Night, Momma, I love you” and go right back to sleep.
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June 27, 2016
4:00 a.m.
Sally and I are watching Peppa Pig. Peppa has a family and tonight, she’s planted a seed and she’s waiting for a strawberry plant to grow. Sally has been up about hour and her eyes don’t seem heavy at all. I’m having a cup of coffee and thinking about being a young mother and wondering how I had the stamina to keep going. But Sally has given me a memory of her Uncle Mike had been tucked away in my memory for a long, long time.
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So, as the Waltons called out at the end of every episode for all of their nine seasons, “Good Night, Everyone!” and as I am able to say with sweet Sally on my lap, “Good memories and thank you, Sally."
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