Molly Carroll

6:00pm on a Tuesday night, both my roommates bundle up to head off to the hospital for their night shifts. I sit finishing my dinner while chatting with my mom on the phone, the kind of conversation I could take part in forever, excited to have a few mid-week days off to myself.

I tidy up a bit and debate a movie or a book before I find myself settled in, habitually reaching for a novel I’ve read not long ago. Maybe it was the comfort of gliding through the pages of such a familiar story, or the nature of the music I had playing softly on the speaker in the kitchen, but I feel myself drifting to sleep. 8:30pm.

I, unsurprisingly, wake at 1:00am. Already feeling well rested, my day could have started then and there, while watching the automatic lights of the Rosslyn high rises slowly turn dark until the start of the next work day. I spend the next two and a half hours attempting to relax my mind using every trick in the book, willing exhaustion to wash over me again.

It’s nearly 4:00am when a very distant memory surfaces.

Suddenly, I am five years old again, lying restlessly in my old bedroom on Woodberry Rd in Sudbury, Massachusetts. The memories I have of this home are limited, as I was only in elementary school when we left. I feel my fear of the dark bubbling up inside me, debating the journey to my parents bedroom on the opposite end of the hall, wishing so badly I could blink my eyes and magically feel the familiar safety of being nestled between my mom and dad. I muster up the courage to slip out of bed, my first instinct being to peer out my window into the backyard, making sure the back patio was still vacant. Surrounded by silence, I tiptoe past my doll house and open walk-in closet, pausing to be sure my pink tutu is just that, and not a monster.

Finally, I reach my bedroom door, peeling it open. I glance down the hallway at my parents’ closed door and trace my route from the nearby linen closet on my left to the open bathroom door that leaves an impression of more shadows, then to my younger brother’s room and lastly, my destination. Why does it have to be so far?

I freeze and hesitantly peek to my right at the banister and staircase leading to the downstairs sea of pitch black darkness before my eyes land on my older brother’s bedroom door, the one directly next to mine.

Ever so quietly, I pry Jack’s door open and draw my breath in sharply at the sight of a strange shape in the opposite corner of his room, letting out a sigh of relief when I recognize it as his navy blue bean bag chair. My eyes adjust to the new level of darkness that his walls bring in contrast to that of my light pink ones, and I’m able to make out the outlines of baseballs, footballs, basketballs and soccer balls that make up his queen-sized quilted duvet. I crawl under the covers on the empty side of his bed and tap him awake with a powerful whisper:

“Jack, Jack… JACK! I can’t sleep and I’m scared. Can I stay here with you?”

His little six year old body rolls over to fluff my pillow and pull the covers over me, tucking me in before turning away from me once more to drift back to sleep. Though his presence brings me much needed comfort, I toss and turn restlessly for a while longer until he turns and says to me:

“You’ll fall asleep faster if you try lying perfectly still. Just relax from your head all the way down to your toes.”

Afraid he’ll kick me out if I wake him up again, I lie there perfectly still, desperately trying not to move a muscle. The morning light poking through the blinds and the sound of my mother speaking softly to my two year old brother stirs me awake before I could even realize my eyes had drifted closed and hours had passed. It worked.

I’m 22 years old now, no longer afraid of the dark, now 365 miles from my parents’ and brothers’ bedrooms instead of just down the hall, and this memory stays with me during any sleepless night, transporting me to a time filled with comfort, familiarity and safety. I could count on my fingers the vivid core memories I have of that house and that age, and it still amazes me that this is one of them. Such a simple, fleeting moment. Some birthdays, vacations, and moving days live on only in photographs rather than in my memories, but one sleepless night at age five has stuck with me all these years only to surface when I need it most.

It still works every time, so thanks, Jack, for your words of wisdom at age six. 

I doubt that memory sticks with you all these years, you just wanted me to quit waking you up.