Horsey Go Night-Night

The noise crashed against her wall. BAM-BAM-BAM. With composure, she came from the bed, her husband sleeping soundly beside her. Down along the shadowed, stucco walls, she rounded the hallway and into the room where the origin of the rhythmic pounding could be found.

The boy’s locks, bleached white by the sun, flailed wildly as he rocked, his blanket slung over his shoulder like a hunter’s bow. Mother took her son from the rocking horse and lay him in bed, again.

This was a thing she would do again that night, and the next night, and the rest of her nights until she devised a plan.

On the last occasion where she had to end the late night rodeo, she took her half-sleeping son from the rocking horse and sat him on his bed.

“The horsey is very tired,” she told him. “He needs to go night-night.”

She lay the rocking horse on its side, then removing the blanket, the one she had woven that, again, like always, rested on her son’s shoulder, spread it across the now resting rocking horse.

“Horsey go night-night.”

The son, looking both puzzled and slumbered, studied the situation for a moment. A look of understanding transformed his brow. “Ok, mom. Horsey go night-night,” he nodded.

He crawled into his bed as his mother drew his blankets back. She tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead. “Go, night-night,” she said.

And that was the last time the midnight rodeo would occur.

“Night-night, mom.”

“Night-night, Jason.”