Last night

It's eleven o'clock and my oldest son is sleeping in a room that glows with stick on stars. He's laid out his clothes and packed his pencil case twice in anticipation of the first day back to school tomorrow. His arms and legs are long and tanned and tangled up in sheets covered in primary coloured splotches, sheets he hates, sheets he says are too babyish for him, sheets he nags me to give to Leo. When did grade four sneak up on us like this? I remember grade four.

It's eleven o'clock and my three year old son is not sleeping. The last time his father went in to check on him he sat up in bed in order to show him how he could swim, spinning his arms like windmill blades in a dry land imitation of his brother's front crawl.

His night-time waking has increased since his newest brother arrived. Most nights one of us has to go in and lie down with him at least three or four times. I was in his room earlier, listening to music, whispering about honey bears and mummy bears, tracing my fingers along the impossibly smooth skin of his back and watching his little chest rise and fall, his just past toddler fingers, still so chubby with babyhood, twitch while his little eyelids so slowly, slowly dropped. The image is overused, I admit: his sweaty tousled curls, his rhythmic breathing, and I know it won't last. He's awake again but this time it's his father's turn.

It's past eleven o'clock now and my youngest son needs to be fed. He smells like sweet milk and baby, that soft newborn smell and his little sighs and grunts are enough to make me cry. They quicken my heart. The truth of all these cliches shocks me, even now, even with my third. He is perfect. He is mine and perfect and new.

I feel a sense of deja vu, like I have written this letter to myself once before, tired imagery and all. Maybe it was in grade four. "dear future me", "dear me of the past". This is who you are. This is who you will be. Isn't strange? Like the sun-light that blinds you as you move from behind the trees, around a corner in the road, It erases everything else but it's beautiful. Isn't it?

*amended to add that by 11:30 everyone in the house was awake. My oldest son could sleep through all the noise and I found him reading a book by the light coming in from the hallway. And I remember doing that too.