Oh, my sweet summer child server.

We were snugly seated in the open-til-midnight diner booth’s waxy, glittery seats, bemoaning the endlessness and non-ecstasies of motherhood’s sleeplessness.  We meaning, in this case, myself and two mom friends.  We’d just ordered our milkshakes (essential) and tots (more essential) and diet cokes (most essential-est) and were beginning the night with some good-natured moaning and groaning about how tired having kids can make you.  Because it does!  Oh, does it ever. One of us confessed to breaking down crying over being so tired with children who refuse to go to sleep.

You overheard our gnashing of teeth (both tot-related and, well, tot-related) and leaned in conspiratorially.

“Oh my gawd,” you said, with a flip of your ponytail.  “I know, I am, like, so tired too.  Last night, I was out drinking, not like crazy drinking but you know how it gets, and then I got back to my dorm at 4 in the morning but then I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t find my socks and I just started crying and crying because I was so tired, it is just, like, the worst!”

Oh, my sweet summer child, we were clearly all thinking as she laughed and we politely agreed that yes, dear, that sounds awful.  That one night of fun and subsequent sleeplessness sounds exactly like our endless nights of woe.  Having a fun night out on the town and then being unable to boozily find a sock — yes, that’s exactly the same as sobbing as your child sobs and flops about in their crib like a wakeful fish, refusing to sleep, night after night, night after night, night after night.  And you have to work in the morning.  Or you don’t, but you have to watch a little person all day and be responsible for them, and drive wakefully and safely.

Oh, my sweet precious cockatiel, my innocent little platypus, my darling little bubbly goldfish baby, bless your heart.  You do not know sleeplessness.  You do not know exhaustion.  You do not know.  You know nothing.

You likely will though,someday, and when you do — for real for real, someday, maybe, remember us, a trio of laugh-crying women with milkshakes and tots and diet coke, and remember us as your harbingers, your sleepy-eyed future flashed before your eyes but impossible for you to comprehend.  But I hope beyond the sleeplessness you saw the love we shared for our kids — the lengths we’d go to in order to provide a safe haven for our sleepless tots, our strapping kids, our little loves.  I hope you will look back and see that through our moaning, we were so full of love, too.  I hope you’ll think back on us and say to yourself, “Oh my gawd, I had no idea what I was talking about.”  I hope you understand, then.  But I hope you feel that kind of love, too.

All our love,

3 tired, tired, tired moms who nodded kindly, tipped you, and let you go on thinking that a single night of post-drinking tiredness is the same, like, at all, because we love you, dear sweet summer child. We do. We want you to keep your sleep-related innocence while you can. And we hope you find your socks. Honestly, we get it; we’ve cried over some crazy stuff too.