Nights are growing longer like the way she’s growing her hair. She agreed to let me crop it for summer and then missed how it used to fall around her shoulders. It’s in the not-yet-light hours when she turns our door handle.

“Mom, I’m freezing.”
“Well go put on more clothes.”

We are shouting these whispers in the medium between a whirring fan and the solitude of the slumbering. She returns quickly with a pillow, Heart Pup who has been by her side since she barely fit into a carrier seat at the hospital, and a little more desperation than necessary.

“I need a blanket. I’m still SO cold. Will you get me one?”

I say nothing, contemplating the alternative I’m going to give her because I know for certain that I won’t be getting out of my cocoon for what she can do herself.

“Mom? Can you get me a blanket?”  
“You can grab your comforter off your bed.”

Her abandoned pillow lies faithfully on the floor while she’s off retrieving. Dad has made a rule that when he’s home, in other words when he’s still in bed, no big kids allowed on that sacred Queen size. It is why our youngest will be resented, though I don’t think she minds. She’s too distracted being the only one cuddling between us.
During weekdays all remaining four of us pile in to listen to the garage door lift and the truck growl to life. We revel in our freedom and defiance until elbows start to fly because someone is touching someone is touching someone.

I hear her snuggle up and we are quiet, we two awake ones. Words of a friend from long ago come to me.

“Why don’t you play too?”

You see, I once used that same desperate whine as my daughter.
“While I’m doing dishes and cleaning up, he’s wrestling and tickling the kids. If he would help me then we could all get stilly together.”
“And what would happen if you just left the dishes?”
I raise my palms, eyes closed. “Whoa, whoa. I can’t do that. I mean, they’d be dirty, all over the counter.”

With a fistful of covers that I roll back in a triangle, I take my own pillow and steal some pink quilt. She scoots closer and I can hear the way she tries to control her excitement.

“Hi Mom.”
“Hi Sweetie.”

I can play too.