Picture a typical 70s living room: tan couches, wicker & glass coffee table to compliment the large wicker peacock chair, a wall and a half of built-in bookshelves loaded with albums, german steins, imitation asian statues, and my father’s last can of unopened Billy Beer. The orangish colors in the old polaroids even themselves mimic some of the color schemes of that time. Picture me, the smallest kid in my class, with my Star Wars figurines, iron-on rainbow exclamation point tshirt, and mork-from-ork suspenders. I fit there, don’t I?
As a child, I hated bedtime. I could make a bazillion excuses why I should stay up, half of which required me to pass through our idyllic living room to the kitchen as my parents were entertaining, serving her sorority sisters pina coladas or his hunting partners another michelob. I wanted to be part of their jokes. I wanted to wear my eye shadow like “Aunt” Ruby. I wanted to learn to play dominoes for the wonderful clacking sounds. But my sisters and I were always sent to bed what I still to this day consider unreasonably early to give the grownups their “me” time. I would usually get caught somewhere other than my bed, the ends of my long brown hair hanging in damp spikes from playing in the tub with my action figures or mom’s tupperware, decked out in a one of dad’s tshirts that we got to wear to bed. I had to have the door cracked open at night, to have some sort of light shine into my room, so that *things* wouldn’t get to me as I tried to sleep. And to try to hear what the grownups were laughing about.
Now picture my living room, if you can: the passthrough area between the bedrooms, brown microfiber couches, the coffee table I spray painted blue & silver (yes, what a fun day that was!) being used to hold the larger tv purchased thanks to this years tax refund, brown & shimmery turquoise curtains, and books strewn everywhere. Some days I swear it looks like the back room at Half Price Books. Anyway, my son gets sent to bed at eight, unless something really important is happening, which could be as simple as watching the end of ET a few weeks ago. He likes his bedroom door open too, but I’ve only heard him tell me of bad dreams a handful of times in his life. I might be jinxing myself here, but he rarely balks when I say it’s bedtime, though in exchange he cheerfully greets the world earlier in the morning than I can.
Our bedroom doors are a straight line across the cluttered living room. The older tv now sits on the desk in my room. Last night, I had on Star Wars again, thanks to Spike catering to the masculine viewers showing one movie in the saga on a near regular basis each Sunday. And since I tend to tune into Star Wars any time I can, no matter which movie it is and no matter how many times I have seen it before, I had The Phantom Menace
I actually started grinning. I could so easily put myself back thirty years, to the tiny kid struggling to be included, even if it meant hanging on the side of the couch slightly out of view to catch a glimpse of the action. In the end, I decided to open my door a bit more to give him the best view I could. I figured, hey, he was in bed, and quiet, and a good kid, why not make bed time as easy as possible. By the time the movie ended and I was ready to put down my book for the evening, I went to check on him, kissed his sleeping cheek, and tucked his Galactic Heroes comforter up to his shoulders.
