The coolness of the refrigerator hits my face while I try to find anything that will take me away from the banana chocolate chip cake on the counter. Back and forth goes my gaze like I’m watching two people in a fight. I longingly look at the cake, the mere smell of it adding cellulite to my thighs, and begrudgingly turn again to the frigid shelves of carrots. But I don’t want carrots. I want banana cake.
Oh these decisions when I’m alone in my sweats in the barely morning hours.

Ignoring overdue library movies and scattered Memory Game cards, I navigate a path to the couch and settle in with more books and notebooks than necessary. It’s the price I pay for reading based on mood. I string my cheese, my compromise between what I should eat and what I shouldn’t eat, and picture my little girl playing. I can hear her high-pitched voice, the one she uses to make her mice friends come alive. Their house sits cockeyed on our chair, tables and clothes and mice-folk splayed in the wake of her imagination. Cups and glasses adorn every free surface in this room, evidence that I haven’t taught my older children the concept of reusing.

Not sleeping is stupid, I text him. This is our language now, my dad and I. Twenty-six letters, ten numbers, and a maraca alert signal.
How did you know I didn’t sleep?
Huh? I didn’t. I was talking about me.

The gas fireplace hums near me and I think about how much he hates the smell of smoke. It unnerves him. I kid you not, that man can be in a dead sleep and notice a lit cigarette from another town.
If he were with me we’d be halfway through a pot of coffee. He’d be telling me about a book he’s reading that is changing his entire view of the modern church. I’d listen and bring up questions until jammies started toddling to my lap and a second pot was beginning to sputter.

I wonder if we’d had texting when I was younger, how the conversations would have flowed. I would have been restless in the waterbed that gulped with my every toss and turn. Beneath my rainbow heart comforter I would have avoided the window that creeped me out worse than the boys at school who scratched their…well, that’s a blog all its own.

Hi daddy. I can’t sleep. Can you? I am going to get apple juice. BRB.

Hi Booger. (Let the verbal abuse begin.) Sorry about that. Why not?

Its just that suzy and cindy my two friends well one is my friend and the other one is to but I’m not supose to tell the other one. They are always switching who there mad at. Like yesterday suzy was mad at cindy and I wasnt suppose to tell cindy and then cindy said she was my freind but to not tell suzy.

Tell me, Daddy. This is what I would have been speaking between the misspelled words and horrible grammar. Tell me I matter, and that these girls would be weirdos to not be my friend. Tell me my world will be okay, that I’ll survive pimples and coming adolescence and insecurities. Tell me in these lonely hours I’m not invisible. Tell me my value.

I’m sorry sweetie. I wish I was there to give you a hug. You are smart. You will work it out. I LOVE you so much.

Our real texts are grown-up, with grown-up problems and exhaustion from raising children and check-in’s about anniversaries of his dad and my grandpa passing away. They are middle of the night, early morning, and everything between.

Who knows what the dialogue would have been back then, I only need to know what it is now.

“Eve possesses a bottomless well of longing. Jesus alone is the never-ending fount, which can slake her thirst.” – John and Staci Eldredge, Captivating