On jellyfish lamps, early mornings, and the nights I may miss
Since September 2024, Holden and I have been roommates.
This was not a sentimental parenting decision.
My parents’ house simply does not fit all of us very well, so we share my brother’s old bedroom. Two twin beds on opposite walls. His stuff on one side. Mine on the other. A temporary arrangement that somehow became our normal.
Living this close together has required some compromise. Mostly mine.
For starters, I have endured his jellyfish lamp for a very long time.
I do not like lights when I sleep. Holden, unfortunately, has different interior design standards. He wants the jellyfish glowing beside his bed every night, floating around in their little plastic tank while I lie across the room wondering why darkness apparently became optional. We have had this disagreement many times. He remains unmoved. I remain the one who caves.
The lamp has not been our only source of conflict. There was also the 6 am phase.
For a long stretch, Holden would wake up at approximately six every morning and immediately wake me up too. There was no period of quiet contemplation. No attempt to entertain himself. His eyes opened and apparently his first responsibility as a citizen was to make sure mine did too.
I tried sending him back to sleep. This almost never worked. He just started talking. It went on for ages.
Eventually, I attached a watch to his bed and explained that he needed to look at it before getting up. If it did not say 7:00 yet, he was supposed to stay in bed. I thought this was brilliant. It worked for several days.
Then the novelty wore off.
Apparently, the existence of the watch did not mean he felt particularly bound by its findings. On many mornings, he would get up before everyone else anyway and get on the computer, which meant the rest of the house would soon wake up to Holden becoming increasingly furious at a video game.
So much for preserving the peace.
Last school year brought another morning ritual. The second Holden opened his eyes, he asked me the same question: “Do I have school today?”
Every morning.
We tried explaining weekdays and weekends. We even made up a little chart: Monday through Friday, school. Saturday and Sunday, no school. This is a concept understood by millions of children around the world.
It did not take here.
I would wake up on a random Tuesday to a small voice from across the room asking whether he had school, as though the educational system might have quietly reorganized itself overnight.
It had not.
And yet, there have been other nights too. The nights he threw up and I was only three steps away. The night terrors when I could get to him before he was fully awake. The nights I looked over and found him sleeping completely upside down, somehow rotated 180 degrees from where he had tucked himself in.
Sometimes his thumb is still in his mouth. Sometimes one leg is thrown over the side railing.
Those are the nights I remember because they are strange or funny or a little scary.
Most nights are much less eventful.
I usually climb into my bed shortly after he does, and then I listen from across the room. I wait until I hear his breathing change, becoming slower and heavier, and know he is finally asleep. Then I turn on the television quietly and watch something from my bed while he sleeps across the room.
For a long time, I thought mostly about the inconvenience of all of this.
And it has been inconvenient. Wildly so.
I am thirty-seven years old. I would like my own bedroom. I would like darkness when I sleep. I would like to wake up because my alarm went off and not because an eight-year-old needs immediate clarification on whether Wednesday is still a school day. I would like to watch television without waiting for another person’s breathing to reach the correct level of unconsciousness.
And soon, I will.
When we move into the house, Holden will have his own room. So will I. There will be walls between us. He can run the jellyfish lamp all night if he wants. He can wake up early and stare at his own ceiling. I can sleep in actual darkness.
It sounds wonderful.
It probably will be.
But lately I have started wondering whether I will miss this.
Not all of it. I am fairly confident I will survive the loss of the jellyfish lamp.
But maybe I will miss looking across the room and seeing him asleep. Maybe I will miss the sleepy little voice from the other bed. Maybe I will miss knowing exactly when his breathing changes and he has finally drifted off.
Maybe I will even miss opening my eyes and hearing, “Good morning, Mom.”
Most mornings now, that is what he says.
Not “Do I have school?”
Not an urgent announcement about Roblox.
Just, “Good morning, Mom.”
Pleasant. Happy. Holden.
I spent a long time thinking of this room as one more temporary thing we had to get through before our real life could begin. Two twin beds. Not enough space. Too much light. Too little privacy.
But maybe this was real life, too.
One day soon, I will stand in my own quiet bedroom, in my own house, with all the darkness I wanted, and remember the little boy who used to sleep across from me.
Upside down.
Thumb in his mouth.
Jellyfish glowing beside his bed.
And already I will miss the years when there was hardly any space between us at all.
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