March 19, 2004, 8:21 a.m.
Big Sleeps

Spring seems to have sprung, freezing rain is shooting down outside, and there is gloom aplenty hereabouts. Since the Madrid bombing I have caught myself wondering dolefully, in the manner of Cold War pessimists, What Sort of World the children are growing up in. I expect my grandparents felt the same way in the 1930's, when Europe was going through an earlier bout of terrified capitulation.

"Wow, is that a train?" Paris asks, peering at the story splashed across the front page of the Washington Post.

I say yes, it is, and that baddies blew it up. He reaches out a finger and rests it on a photograph of a Spaniard who had his commute violently interrupted. "Is that blood on his face?" he asks worriedly. I say yes, it is. "Is that a — ?" Paris' face crumples.

"No, sweetheart, I thought so too — " I tell him, " — but it's not a baby. The man is just holding a bundle of clothes. And see, he's trying to make a call on his cell phone."

Paris' face clears instantly. "Phew. Can I have porridge and toast for breakfast?"

"You may have anything you like," I say. There's nothing like a terrorist bombing to make a mother feel indulgent.

Molly comes downstairs yawning, with her unbrushed hair in a kind of beehive. She waves a wan "good morning," slides into her seat, opens a wholesome Lemony Snicket novel, and disappears, as far as the rest of us are concerned. At nine-and-a-half, she is experiencing the first tricklings of the hormonal tide that leads, ultimately, to coffee. Last year she couldn't stay up late; this year she can't help it. Last year she woke cheerfully and early; this year she makes piteous mewing noises and tries to crawl back under the covers. It won't be long before she spends the first three hours of every school day yawning and drooping at her desk, in the manner of teenagers everywhere.

"I'm too sleepy to eat," she says listlessly, stirring Nutella into her oatmeal.

"I'm not!" Paris says, digging into his.

"I'm not I'm not I'm not," Violet and Phoebe chime together, which is a new trick of theirs.

Why schools can't operate on a more circadian-friendly rhythm, I do not know. A brisk early-morning start is fine for small children: They've been rioting for hours already. But for anyone older than, say, ten, wouldn't it be more civilized to start lessons around brunch and finish at the cocktail hour? Teachers would get to sleep late every morning and would still arive home before the rest of the adult population. And the Youth of America would be permitted to get its REM sleep and would consequently go on
to Harvard.

But perhaps I am wrong about the amiability of educators, for as a bunch they seem to get flintier and more tough-lovey by the year. First they came for the arts and music programs, and I said nothing. Then they came or recess, and I said nothing. Now they are coming for afternoon naps, and a least the Washington Post has something to say about it.

"Time May Be Up for Naps in Pre-K Class" ran the headline over a grim Post piece earlier this week about public schools in the Washington area. "Naptime needs to go away," one Maryland schools chief was quoted saying, adding that teachers "need to get rid of all the baby stuff," and presumably get down to calculus and Pliny and mapping the White Nile.

Except, of course, four-year-olds won't get anything so exciting. Denied a snooze, the poor little wretches will spend an extra 45 minutes a day yawning and drooping at their tiny tables, coloring shapes, connecting dots, and navigating mazes. This must surely be right and good, for as one principal told the Post, pre-kindergartners "can't be babied." What sort of world, indeed?

Everyone is strapped into the car for the school run when Molly remembers that no one has checked the rabbit's food and water. I whip back in to our utility room, where Twitchy has his rainy-day quarters. His spacious cage is lined with newspapers that he rips into strips and then burrows beneath, like a sulky adolescent.

In the semi-darkness, my breath catches at the sight of him lying on top of the papers, stretched out and prone.

"Bunny...?" I draw closer and pull a bit of hanging twine that clicks on the light. In the cruel glare of a bare bulb, Twitchy is motionless. Perhaps it's only because there's been so much death in the news, but I seem to be seeing the Reaper everywhere I look.

"Oh, poor bunny..."

I bend down, gently open the cage, and reach out to stroke his lovely soft fur —

Scuffle-pow!

Twitchy springs up like a man who hit the snooze button an hour ago and just realized he missed his plane. He jumps immediately on to his litter box, which I suppose makes sense, if you are a rabbit. Dang, I was asleep! Quick, to the lavatory!

"Bunny, you're alive!" I cry, my eyes prickling with tears of relief.

There's been something very odd about the last week. The skies over Washington are cold and gray, and in the lowering sense of tragedy after Madrid, one gets the alarming feeling that too many Europeans and Americans are already tired of fighting Islamist terror. We just want to get a little rest. Our enemies want us to drop off into the Big Sleep.

— Meghan Cox Gurdon is an NRO columnist.
Gurdon lives in Washington, D.C. and writes as much as her young family
will permit. Her NRO column, "The Fever Swamp" appears weekly.

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