But as the fierce vexation of a dream

Lately, at night after Nugget has gone to bed, I've been thinking a lot about what it was like to be a kid lying awake and listening to the adults still moving around the house. It is poignantly funny that I wanted desperately to be up with them. What I would give now to be in bed with Nugget instead of hunched over my computer trying to finish some work before I go to bed, pushing down the nagging ever-present worries that crowd my brain! How little I realized that my bedtime was not so much a magical time for grownups to enjoy their freedom as it was a time for the drudgery that makes a child's charmed life possible. I don't begrudge my son his turn -- I had an idyllic childhood, and now I want to give him the same. Well, better. But how silly and sad that I didn't know what I had when I had it.