My husband is napping. He rises every morning in the quiet dark, hours before M or I begin to stir. Because of this he often drops into sleep in the late afternoon when he sits down, or early in the evening if we are sitting together to watch a movie. M and I joke about it. We know he won't make it through any movies we start. When we hear his faint snore begin to issue from the heavy head, when we see the softened mouth and the crazily angled head, we nudge each other and smile.
Sometimes we wake him.
On this particular afternoon M feels that regardless of Der's waking hour, it is simply far too early. "Hey dad, wake up!"
"What, what happened?"Der stirs and looks blearily around, warm from the stoked fire, from dreams.
"The war's over!" M shouts, apparently, the first thing that comes to mind.
The "War on Terror" has been going on since his first year of life. He was born in the year 2000. He has only known a world and a country at "war" with everyone who looks to be a threat, an abstract war on terror in which anyone could be an enemy. When M was eight, during the election year, he said, "Bush has been the president my whole life," and it seemed a long time. During his lifetime homeland security became a household term, the war on terror justified the detention of people without a trial.
"I wish that could happen, a person falls asleep and a war is over. I wish it were that easy. You wake up and say,'Hey, the war is over,' " he says to himself.
"Is it over?"he asks me.
Der, lion-like, smiles sleepily, happy to let me field that question, and lets his eyelids drop again.
No comments:
Post a Comment