Well Water...Part Two

When he was finished and suitably clothed, he walked around to Shonda’s side of the bed and turned off the radio, which was still softly mumbling from when the alarm had gone off. He walked towards the bedroom door and towards the downstairs portion of the morning ritual. Chris headed downstairs and As he walked down the carpeted hallway of the second floor of the house, he peeked into the first door on the right. Savannah, as usual, was still sound asleep. Chris could hardly make out that anyone was in the bed at all because she had piled up a couple of comforters and assorted pillows and stuffed animals, so that all he could see was a small tuft of very blond hair. He blew her a kiss and started for the stairs.

As he approached the stairs he looked passed the half open door into his oldest son Noah’s bedroom. The boy, too, was still asleep. Unlike his older sister, Noah had thrown all of his covers off during the night and was now sleeping sideways on his bed in the fetal position. Both of his hands were clasped tightly between his legs and his head was hanging off the edge of the bed. Chris shut the door completely and decided to be preemptive and get their youngest child, Nicholas, out of bed before he started his own version of the morning ritual.

They had never discovered the exact time when Nicholas usually began his day. They weren’t sure if he worked his way up to the “grand finale” of his ritual or if he popped straight out of bed with guns blazing. All they knew was that what their youngest child did on a daily basis was quite possibly the most annoying thing that any living person on the entire planet could ever do while others were trying to sleep.

Nicholas, or “Bit” as his father called him (“Bit” being short for “little bit”), was 3 years old. He was a firecracker of a little boy with pale blonde hair and deep blue eyes. He had a very intense attitude towards life, as most three year olds do, and was just beginning to speak in full sentences. About a year earlier, Bit had started to wake up well before the rest of the household by about half an hour or so. Chris surmised that in those early days he simply woke up and then sat in his bed until someone came into to get him. Once Nicholas got tired of waiting in his bed, he began to get out of bed and wait by his door. When the sheer boredom began to get the better of him, he eventually switched to crying until his door opened. The problem with this was that no one could hear him crying while they were sound asleep. Noah and Savannah could tune out an artillery barrage while sleeping, and mommy and daddy’s room was just too far away for them to hear him. He would continue to cry until someone, anyone, noticed him and released him from his morning prison. Usually, it was when Chris or Shonda were on their way downstairs that they would hear the crying and see a tiny little arm sticking all the way out from underneath the bedroom door.

So when all of these actions did not produce the desired effect that Bit was looking for, he finally stumbled upon one that did. Once Bit realized that crying was an effort in futility, he switched to a more direct approach. When he woke up, he would get out of bed and lay on the floor directly by his door. While on this back he would lift his feet up and place them on the door. Then he would begin to kick.

It would be very slow at first. A rhythmic “thump…thump…thump” that you could even consider hypnotic under different circumstances. That hypnotic thump would then turn into a soft drumming sound that you couldn’t quite make out, especially if you were sound asleep. As he sped his feet up, you couldn’t quite make out what the sound was, you just know that something wasn’t quite right with the morning time serenity.

Then, as if he was the entire timpani section of the St. Louis Symphony being lead by a world class director, there would come a crescendo of sound…accompanied by a powerful, escalating vibration that you could feel throughout the house. Bit could pound his feet on his door so quickly that the resulting tremor literally shook the entire second floor of their two-story home. And then to accentuate this musical interlude of domestic percussion, he would highlight his performance with a two-footed door pound that could actually hurt your ears if you were too close. A few times, when Chris and Shonda had been downstairs while Bit was waking up from a nap, they could actually see the water in their drinking glass vibrate and picture frames shift on their nails.

But as annoying as this single act was, Chris had always had to give props to his baby boy because he always got the desired result from this action. He had tried to ignore it the first few times thinking that Bit would get tired of that too. But eventually Chris realized he just needed to suck it up and go get the kid, otherwise the entire house would be awake and then he’d be the bad guy for letting it happen.

So Chris, hoping to avoid an encore performance of bedroom door percussion, opened up Bit’s door and stepped inside. His room was still dark with only a thin beam of sunlight coming through a crack in his very dark and heavy curtains. Chris walked over and gently whispered “Good morning little man”. Bit immediately woke up and then jumped into his daddy’s arms. Chris scooped him up and they both went downstairs together. As they passed the other kids’ rooms, Nicholas raised one finger to his lips and said “shhh” with a very serious look on his face. His father laughed and they both went down the steps.