Key of Z

When I was a little girl, we lived in Richmond.  On the top floor of a house on Idylwild Court. Abby was born while we lived in this house.  We got a puppy while we lived there too.  I tasted sweet tea for the first time in the kitchen of the basement neighbors, and played in the creek in the backyard with my Barbies.

I remember getting a cassette tape while we lived there.  Katherine and I shared a room, I think, and we had a tape player.  I don't remember actually being given the tape, but I know I couldn't sleep without it.

Larry plays the piano.  In the mid-nineties he had somehow recorded a two-sided cassette tape for my sister and me, which we would play whenever we laid down to sleep every night.  Religiously we listened to this music, so if we didn't play it, we couldn't sleep.  I remember the first few tracks by heart.  Inevitably though, I'd fall asleep before side "A" was ever finished.

But I'd wake up as soon as the cassette player clicked and flipped the tape over to play side "B".  Similarly, I have the first few songs on the second side memorized.  To this day, I'm not sure I ever stayed awake long enough to hear the end of the tape.

This music was night music.  It was not to be played in the day time, it was meant for sleeping.  This music was our lullaby.  Our gift.  And a very intrinsic, innocent part of my earliest memories.

Later, when cassette tapes were no longer common and Katherine and I had our own bedrooms on Long Avenue, Larry gave us CDs for Christmas.  New sleep music.  New lullabies.  And the same thing happened... to this day I am not sure I have ever heard the end of the CD.  Sleep somehow finds me halfway through, every time.

A few weeks ago, I can't remember quite when (but it might have been while I was in the hospital having Judah), Larry told me he was at it again.  He was creating new lullabies.  A new generation needed sleep music.  My little boy and my little nephew.

Last night Larry called.  Friday night, his social schedule is more crazy than mine has ever been.  So when he called and asked if he could come by, I suspected two things.

And I was right about both.

Something inherently similar to Aunt Liv's quiet, snuggle time in the mornings... we all crave alone, uninterrupted time with these little boys.  A still apartment, no others vying for cuddles, no one talking too loud, nothing specific to be done.  Just a sweet sinking, deep breathing, warm baby, same heartbeat.

And the lullabies.

I wouldn't listen to the new CD while Poppy was here, because I knew I'd cry.  But once he left, Liv, Judah, and I curled up on the couches, and we listened.

I woke up three hours later, Judah hungry and stirring quietly like he does.

I hadn't heard the end of the CD.