I remembered those bleary years when John and I had a night life involving being coherent and vertical. Amnesia has crept in for the first seven babies but I have not yet forgotten midnight with twins. What raised its ugly head above the fog was the anger. We were both exhausted and, I might add, in our forties. There were times when our high school students were up too, doing calculus or stealing golf carts, but they had youth on their side. I would heave accusations like missiles across the bed to John as I dragged myself and two squalling girls out of the warm quilts to change poopy diapers. Although I was working on substandard brain power, I was intent on keeping score. Had I gotten less sleep than him? What was the tally? Sometimes we argued with pitiful cases about how we deserved sympathy. But the only other people to hear us were preverbal and they were not listening.

Last night Benjamin howled. Repeatedly. He is decidedly not finished with summer and made as much noise about it as he could which was plenty. We promised our neighbors to evict all roosters once they started crowing, which we did, but the level of their cacophony was nothing compared to Ben on a roll. Still social services and parental ties prevent us from evicting him. By three in the morning John and I had abandoned hopes of sleeping. 

"Did you remember to give him melatonin?" he asked. No malice, just doing research. Melatonin is the reason we are still alive. It is a little white pill that promotes drowsiness, involving a hormone that is produced by the pineal gland. Benjamin's thyroid is non functioning, and we give him a supplement. 

"I did," I replied without defensiveness. I climbed out of bed and walked the insufficient-to-buffer-screaming distance between our room and Ben's. 

"I don't want to go to school anymore," he informed me as if he had not mentioned that eight gazillion times this month. Six of our kids have homeschooled for part of their childhoods, but Benjamin has autism. He and I need time apart. 

Yesterday Ben actually convinced his teacher that he might throw up and got sent to the nurse. She called and I came to pick him up. I knew he was fine, and I could not hide my amusement that he had figured out how to fool her. Deceit is in some ways progress for a kid on the spectrum. 

"People who don't go to school don't get to play computer all day." I said it quietly.

"Whadjasay?" That is Benspeak for You have my full attention.

"If you stay home, no computer." Silence. I snuggled back into my warm bed. 

"Whether it works or not, thank you," John mumbled. 

In the quiet that slid into John softly snoring, I thought about how far we had come. Faced with the same circumstances that had leveled us ten and twenty and thirty years ago, we no longer attacked each other. 

We are on the same side.