Glints

I

t had been a long day, the sort you have when the kids are little and the days long and their needs incessant, but we’d made it, finally, to bedtime. We’d read the last bedtime story and said Shema, the kids still damp from their baths, faces scrubbed, cheeks clean, and I was just about ready to finally breathe, when Zevy jumped up and straddled the big old-fashioned hinged window in his bedroom, his legs hugging either side of the glass, exactly the way I’d told him not to. I was about to tell him to get off yet again, as the window drifted gently toward its frame, when suddenly, it fell off its hinges, shattering with a giant THUD! into a million winking diamonds, glass everywhere, and all of the breath was sucked out of me until—

“Eli did it!” Zevy cried from amid the shards, pointing at Eli who stood on the other side of the room, next to the — oh my goodness, the crib! The baby!

Somehow, miraculously, no one was hurt, I could breathe again, but there was glass on every surface. I brushed off the kids, carried them into the hallway, and assessed the room. It would take an hour, at least, and the kids were already giggling and sticking their feet into the room— “Look, I kicked the glass!”

I sighed, made up the beds in the guest room, set up the Pack ‘n Play, said Shema again (I drew the line at repeating bedtime stories) and, warning the kids to stay in bed, went back into the kids’ room to start the weary task of shaking out sheets and vacuuming corners.