Asleep
Nathan Alling Long
Growing up, I loved watching people sleep: my sister, my brother, my parents—even our dog. Asleep, their faces lay blank, still, without a twitch of direction or emotion, as if revealing some hidden self. They resembled trees, or stones, something neither good nor bad, but purely themselves.
Seeing them as they slept made me feel a calm lightness inside—the way I felt when my sister Ellie wrapped her hands in old socks, making two puppets, Oscar and Brown, who talked to each other in high, barky voices:
“Hey Oscar, would you fly to the moon with me?”
“The moon? Sure. But what’s there?”
“Cheese. Lots of lovely cheese. And not the stinky kind, either.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s no atmosphere there, so it can’t stink.”
I don’t know why I laughed so hard at those puppets, but they always transformed me. We fell into a different world, Oscar, Brown, Ellie, and me.
Other times, Ellie made me feel small, too young. “Mom, I don’t think Alex changed his clothes since three days ago.” Or, “You don’t know where babies come from? Come on, you’re almost seven!”
Awake, anyone could make me feel… Read more »