patience

It was almost nine o'clock when I finally tucked Audrey into bed. She was wearing her princess jams and her blonde hair splayed against her pillow in a pouf. We had spent an hour after-dinner sorting the toys that carpeted her bedroom floor and now all was clean and quiet in the warm glow of the Van Gogh nightlite.

"Mommy?" Audrey ventured, fingering the frayed edges of her blankie.

"Yes?"

"Mommy?" she said again, her eyes gazing past me to the darket corner of the room. "Mommy? ...um...Mommy-um...Mommy..."

"Yes," I said, a note of impatience creeping into my voice. Sitting on the edge of her bed, I crossed and uncrossed my legs, trying not to think of the dishes still in the sink, the piles of unfolded laundry at the foot of my bed, or (most important of all) the husband, who was waiting for my company. "Audrey, what is it?"

"Mommy...um... Mudder," her eyes snapped back and locked mine. "I love you."

"Oh, I love you too, baby. And now it's time for sleep."

"Okay. Mommy?"

"Yes."

"I halfta go to sleep... I have to go to sleep cause, cause, be-cause - it's dark outsdie. But then, when I'm waking up in the mornin', I'm gonna come in yer bed and then I'm gonna snuggle you and then, then - then, to-morrow you wanna watch the rest of 'Okla-homa with me?' Wanna do it, Maw-maw? You want to?"

"Of course," I said.

And then this morning, very early, just as the sun was beginning to fall in streams across my pillow, I heard the sound of a door clank, and then the swish-swish of a princess dress rustling across the hall, the clap of bare feet against the granite floor. Before I realized what I was doing, the covers were thrown back and I was enveloping a tousle-headed three-year-old into the warm marshmallow cloud that is my comforter.

"Hi, baby," I whispered. "Did you sleep well?"

"No," she said, "I didn't. I fell out my bed because there's a monster in there so I halfta come in here and sleep wit' you."

"I'm so glad you did," I said sleepily.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, Aud?"

"Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"Mommy, I love you the mostest in the world."