Reading in the Dark

My children have had many long, elaborate, and often incomprehensible bedtime routines. I’ve written about these rituals several times because this nightly production has been a pillar of my existence for over a decade. It takes up a lot of space in my head and sometimes causes a fair amount of stiffness in my lower back.

The particulars shift as time passes, sometimes changing almost imperceptibly, like the ocean creeping higher on the shore. Other times, the changes are sharp and crisp, with clearly defined edges, like when my boys went from sharing a room to sleeping in separate rooms and then back to sharing space in a new bunk bed (don’t ask).

My two oldest boys, who currently share a bedroom, are ten and thirteen years old. Bedtime has gotten a lot easier but it’s still more elaborate than you might expect. We’ve taken a step down from, like, a Von Trapp-children-leaving-a-party level to something slightly less choreographed but probably more time-consuming.

It’s both a blessing and a curse.

On the positive side, the routine keeps me connected to my kids as they enter their tween and teen years. It’s nice to feel useful during these end-of-the-day hours when the light is gone and the often chaotic house is still. Between school and activities and gaming and video calls with friends, it often feels like my kids and I live very separate lives now. So, it’s nice to feel like, at least for a small amount of time each day, we’re more than work colleagues exchanging desultory waves and nods at the office coffee machine.

On the negative side, I spend a good hour or more every night lying on a carpeted floor. I’m getting older. My body hurts. It can sometimes be very boring.

I don’t just lie there, of course. As a semi-professional bedtime coordinator, I do have a function. A role that began I’m not sure exactly when but it was at the very least three to four years ago when my oldest son started getting sick with what we later learned was the early symptoms of Crohn’s disease. Back then, I would do whatever it took to make him feel better including reading books out loud for hours at a time.

For the past several years, I have been lying on the floor and reading while the boys lie down and listen in their beds or on the floor or wherever it is they sleep at any given time. At first, I gravitated toward physical books, often illuminating the pages with a flashlight. Recently, I typically stick to e-books on my phone. If they are available, I check them out through the Libby or Hoopla library apps. It all feels extremely mundane in the moment, but when I zoom out and take a wider view, this reading ritual feels at least a little bit magical.

My boys and I have visited so many different worlds together in the past few years. They are big into fantasy and magic. We’ve churned through books featuring wizards, dragons, and talking animals, but we’ve also branched out a bit into other areas. Unfortunately, I haven’t kept a complete record of the books we’ve read but I did log at least some of them into my Goodreads. That has seriously screwed up my year-in-review stats, but it does give me some idea of the imaginary roads we’ve traversed.

I wish I would’ve written all the titles down but who has time for that when you’re lying on the floor for an hour or two every night?

Back when I first decided, kind of on a whim, that I was going to get into books and reading — when I was maybe nineteen years old — I diligently wrote down the title of every book I read in a fat little spiral notebook with a blue cover. I wish I still had that level of commitment and dedication to record-keeping but such is life, I guess. Time tends to wash away our ambition and attention to detail. Or something.

Anyway, among the first books my boys and I read together was the Harry Potter series. The boys were really into all that for a while and then I quietly nudged us in other directions because, well, if you follow news about authors and the writing community, you probably know why.

We read the Percy Jackson books and pretty much everything by Rick Riordan including all the spin-off series (Nico di Angelo is a great character; check those books out if you haven’t yet). We timed it right so new Percy Jackson books started coming out again after we had finished with everything else.

We read a lot of Rick Riordan presents books including standouts like the Tristan Strong series by Kwame Mbalia, the Aru Shah series by Roshani Choksi, and the Sal & Gabi series by Carlos Hernandez.

I discovered an Irish author named Michael Scott, which was super exciting for me because I could casually think about The Office every night for months while we read The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series and others. My oldest son says these books remain amongst his all-time favorites.

We spent a solid six to nine months plowing through Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven, Dragonwatch, and Five Kingdoms. All of these are really good.

I’m not exactly sure how we stumbled upon The Van Gogh Deception and other books in The Lost Art Mysteries series by Deron R. Hicks, but they turned out to be really entertaining. These books feature a couple of kids who solve art museum heists so the boys got to learn a little about famous artists.

I think we mostly did The Green Ember series by S.D. Smith on audiobook, so I didn’t really pay attention, but my oldest son loved these. We gravitated to this series because it’s about adventuring rabbits who I believe fight battles and such. We have two bunnies of our own, Artemis and Apollo, which we got when my son’s chronic illness cropped up. That year of suffering certainly kicked off a lot of things.

Every now and then, we mixed in some shorter and very random titles that I can hardly remember. Books with names like Night of the Bats! These were typically about Minecraft or some other video game.

I forced the boys to indulge me by listening to the entirety of The Chronicles of Prydain series (The Black Cauldron, etc.) by Lloyd Alexander which I had read as a kid and presumably liked. I don’t typically do voices when I read but I did do a pretty killer Gurgi voice.

We also read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which is a book I remember loving when it first came out. I wasn’t sure if they were old enough for it because I didn’t remember the details, but I went for it and it turned out fine. There are some rough themes and topics but I think it was important for them to at least be exposed to real-world issues. Particularly because of the type of world they are likely to inherit.

Most recently, we’ve been methodically working our way through the Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland. There are, by my unofficial count, about 37 books in this series so I’m hoping we can wrap it up before my oldest heads off to college. (I’m leaving this joke in, but I just checked and we are actually closing in on the end of the series so I’m a little depressed now. I guess all good things must come to an end.)

Each night now, when I’ve read my required few chapters about dragons or fairies or spunky teens, I lie on the floor, looking through my phone under the soft light of an outer space projection that illuminates the bedroom’s ceiling. I turn on an audiobook because my oldest son needs even more storytelling than my voice can provide. Sometimes my younger son picks up his book and reads it by the light of my phone’s flashlight. I don’t listen to or partake in these books. These are theirs to explore and appreciate.

It feels a bit like passing the torch. I read my book (or scroll my feeds) while they go their own way. Maybe my kids will keep up their reading habits when the bedtime ritual ends in a year or two or five. Maybe they won’t. It’s impossible to know.

All I know is that I appreciate these moments. Even when I’m tired or bored or kind of in the mood to do anything but read about dragons. These moments are all I’ve got. It’s all any of us have. Even when the world is on fire, if we’re lucky, we can still carve out a little time and space to escape. And connect with the people who matter most.

Time’s not up for us yet. We still have more places to explore. Together.

Andrew Knott is a writer of essays, humor, and fiction. You can subscribe to his newsletter for updates. His debut novel Love’s a Disaster is available now.