"Ready for what?" I ask.
"Ready for our night adventure," replies our six-year-old grandson.
"We have to sleep first," I remind him. Again.
"Okay."
We had finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins before bedtime the previous night . When I ask him if he wants to read something else to help him go to sleep on this, the last night of his solo stay at grandma's house, he says no. He is so excited to be going home that he just squeezes his eyes tightly closed and wills himself to sleep, trying to make the time pass more quickly.
I resume reading my book by the low light of the bedside lamp.
"Now?" the little corner voice says.
"No, not yet. Remember? We will go early in the morning."
"Morning!" he wails with great drama. "You said we would go tonight!"
"Tomorrow morning is tonight," I say, confusing even myself.
His busy little body manages to remain still for about 60 seconds and then he is finally out.
Grandpa Asset begins to stir about 1:30. As in a.m. The car had been loaded before sleeping. We have had much practice at this, driving in the dark to quietly slip through heavily populated southern California before the giant rouses and snarls the freeways. Now all we have to do is get dressed, grab the thermos of coffee and bag of food, and wake the sleeping boy.
He wakes - at 1:30 a.m. - and surprises me with a big grin and shining eyes, the same expectant face he wore on our adventures to Disneyland, and LegoLand, and while riding the bright red trolley. We belt him in the back seat and cushion him with pillows and soft blankets and supply him with a zip lock bag of dry Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And we are off on our last adventure, our Night Adventure.
The National Asset, who does some of his best work in these black, silent hours of the night, drives. I fiddle with a neck pillow and black cloth eye covers and try desperately to fall back asleep. I have to lift the eye mask when we slow for the border patrol checkpoint, and again to help navigate the detour off I-5 through Los Angeles, the one in the place called Never-Ending-Construction. I finally settle down and am drifting... drifting... when I hear it's coming!
"What's coming?" I ask the little one buried in bedding in the back seat. There is a pause as he searches for the words to replace it.
"The light in the sky!" he finally says.
"It's from the sun," I say. "It's called dawn."
"Is that the sun over here?" he asks.
"No, that's the moon," Grandpa Asset responds.
I lift the eye mask to take a peep. There it is, the same luminous full moon we had marveled at before going to bed for our very short sleep. We are driving north through the big valley now. We can see the moon setting over the coast range even as the sun climbs up over the Sierras.
"Remember?" I remind Little One. "We saw the moon come up last night. It will go down in the west and the sun will come up in the east." I use a grand, sweeping arm motion in the front seat of the Prius to illustrate this wonder. Even though my brain and body are groggy from lack of sleep, I take joy in witnessing the simultaneous end of night and beginning of day through the eyes of someone for whom it is completely new and wonderful.
One night while reading Mr. Popper's Penguins I pointed to the word 'nuisance' and asked Little One if he knew what it meant. He gazed off in space, thought for a moment, then said, "Is that like when someone is being pesty?"
"Yes," I laughed. "That is exactly what it is like."
Towards the end of our Night Adventure, before we deliver Little One back to his family, he says "Grandma...I think my sister is going to be pesty to me when I go back home again, isn't she?"
"I think so," I reply. "Sister's are like that."
Soon our Night Adventure is over and it is back to the world of people we live with, people we love. Even the pesty ones.
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