Despite all our griping about bedtime (seriously, show me a parent who always enjoys it, and I will show you a liar), there is something magical in its mundanity. Each night the same thing (although sometimes in a different order): bath, PJs, brush teeth, read a book (or seven), hugs and kisses, and lights out.
When I try to remember my nighttime routine as a kid, my dad’s image comes to mind—pulling out a book, gathering the three youngest of the four siblings together on my little brother’s bed, doing silly voices. (He would sing “When I Was Young in the Mountains” like the lion from The Wizard of Oz).
I can’t say I recall any bedtimes with my mom, yet I know she did it on her own every night, reading stories, kissing our heads, and tucking us in. My dad spent a lot of time away for work, so the nights that stood out in my memory were the ones when he was there. It might seem like the bedtimes with my mom meant less because I don’t remember them, but I think it’s because I don’t remember them that I know they mattered.
There’s a great short story by Louise Erdrich about a girl abandoned by her birth mother because she has “congenital deformities.” She goes on to be adopted by a loving family, and the narrator notes that she doesn’t remember being held as “something special,” so she must have been “held so often that the sensation became a part of [her], inseparable from [her] memory of the world.” (The narrator is referencing a memoir by Peter Razor.)
When an experience is repeated over and over, particularly one that makes us feel safe and loved, it doesn’t stand out as memorable. Instead, it’s all the more precious because it isn’t special at all.
As a mom, I worry about my sons and the kind of childhood I’m providing for them. Many of us get caught up in planning activities for our kids, feeling the pressure to “make memories” that they might someday call up as evidence of their happy upbringing. And those experiences are great and fun, and special, and I’ll read about the family camping trip, their first time on Splash Mountain, or when they got stung by a bee while apple picking when your child is assigned their first personal narrative essay in my English class.
