Carry Me

When I was in about the first grade we rented a lovely old farmhouse in rural Ohio for a year. The house was surrounded by fields and had a long, straight, gravel lane stretching from road to the side of our house. Aaron was an infant then,  Jesse a preschooler.

Each week, for what then felt like an eternity, Mom and Dad would drive home with us so very late at night after church. I remember sitting in the quiet dark of the backseat and counting the stars, memorizing the shadows of what seemed to be a perpetually full moon.  Sometimes I legitimately fell asleep on the drive home. At other times it was slightly less genuine.

Fact: two parents will never possess enough arms to carry three groggy children, a diaper bag, Dad's guitar and sermon notes,  several bibles and whatever other church materials was deemed necessary that week in one trip from the car to the house. If I showed any signs of wakefulness when the car pulled into the driveway, therefore, Mom and Dad would insist that I walk into the house while they carried the aforementioned siblings and church stuff.

Fact: it is much nicer to nestle into the warm arms of one's parents and be carried into the house than it is to walk there oneself. Especially on chilly nights. So I began to pretend to fall asleep just slightly before we arrived home.

The first few times I began the sleepy ritual much too late. It does no good to pretend to fall asleep just as Dad turned into the gravel lane to our house. Somehow he always knew that was an act. Slowly I began to play more sleepy that I actually felt earlier and earlier in the car trip, learning to balance my desire to be carried with my determination to avoid actual sleep until I was tucked safely  into my own bed.

Sometimes -  even if I began the ritual of sleepiness at the correct time and Mom and Dad didn't have too many other things to carry - they'd still ask me to walk.

But sometimes there was no such request. Instead, one of them would walk to the side of the door where I was, er, sleeping and softly pick me up and carry me inside. I can still hear the sound of Dad's shoes crunching against the driveway gravel as he brought me inside, can still feel my little arms reaching around his neck.  Triumph!

(Photo credit.)