The Edge

Sometimes I linger too long at that place between fully awake and fully asleep. There are half-dreams and half-thoughts, the remains of the night and the beginning of the day. I don't feel ready to surrender to wakefulness, but neither can I seem to fall properly back to sleep. And so I linger there, on the edge.

Eventually I give in. Open my eyes. Today my reward is the sweet sight of baby girl fully and totally asleep. Her thumb hangs halfway out of her mouth, her other arm resting against the swell of her soon-to-be (any day now, any minute) baby brother or sister. Under that arm, her two constant companions are pinned between us: the doll I made for one of her brothers, and the rainbow dinosaur her aunt and uncle brought back from Brazil. Behind her lay her three blankets, one Grandma-knit, one Oma-sewn, and her car blanket that somehow migrated to her sleeping space during the past few hot weeks. She is utterly abandoned to sleep and I marvel at her, study this toddler-baby who is both so small and so big at once.

At the end of the bed, the husband is fastening his belt. It felt like only moments ago he had been pressed against my back, arm over me as we slept, interrupted by his alarm (Doctor Who theme, because we're geeks like that) reminding him to get out of bed every few minutes. No contractions meant I couldn't rescue him from this last work day of the week. He kisses me goodbye and leaves quietly. He'll text me later, I know, asking me to go into labour so he can come home from a boring day at the office, and I'll reply in faux-annoyance but it's been five days of this and the annoyance isn't entirely a joke at this point.

Some days I manage to fall back asleep after he leaves. Today I stay awake, just lying there quietly, thinking, until baby girl wakes up too and her early-riser brother hears her babbling and bursts into the room and the day has started, time for breakfast. My time of lingering is over.