A few years ago, I chal­lenged myself to write a bed­time story.

But where to start?

The answer was obvi­ous: where most good sto­ries start… at home.

In the sum­mer of 1974, my father was diag­nosed with can­cer and my twelve-year old world flipped. Sum­mer days became sick days.

I found relief at my friend Lynda’s. Her par­ents owned a small farm in Cen­tral Illi­nois, and it was to their weath­ered, white farm­house sur­round­ed by corn­fields that I escaped. I spent days on end on the Corder farm. There were always lit­ters of kit­tens in the barn, and puffs of peep­ing chicks to hold in my open palm. There were cows, too, and a horse with the clichéd name of Wild­fire, and a goat that ate the laces off my left sneak­er one after­noon. That sum­mer — while my moth­er wor­ried and my father under­went rounds of med­ical treat­ments – I rode a horse and col­lect­ed eggs. My hands grew cal­lous­es. My skin turned brown. I became a real farm girl.

But it was night­time on the farm that held a spe­cial enchant­ment. Long after every­one else had fall­en asleep, I would lie in the top bunk and just lis­ten. Old farm­hous­es like the Corder’s didn’t have air con­di­tion­ing and the night­time farm sounds drift­ed in through the screen win­dows. Crick­ets chirruped. A cow lowed. A dog barked in the dis­tance. And in the dark, in the coun­try, in that very place, I felt safe. The world felt “right” again, if only for those few, cozy moments. For a lit­tle girl with a seri­ous­ly sick father, those moments soothed me.

Even now, when I’m wor­ried or I can’t sleep I’ll think back to those sum­mer nights on the Corder farm. Once again, I’m calmed. Every­thing is “right.”

Nat­u­ral­ly, once I’d decid­ed on writ­ing a bed­time tale, it found its way to the farm.

What did not come nat­u­ral­ly was the pur­pose of most bed­time lit­er­a­ture. Let’s face it; bed­time sto­ries are often parental tools. “I will read you this book and you will go to sleep.” They’re not so much about story.

My youngest son, Michael, sussed this out when he was just a kinder­garten­er. One night, he pushed away the sooth­ing, rhyming bed­time sto­ry I was read­ing to him and said, “Bor­ing, bor­ing. Are bed­time sto­ries sup­posed to bore kids to sleep?”

I didn’t want to do that to my readers!

Still, I did stick to that one essen­tial rule of bed­time sto­ries: all the char­ac­ters must be very, very tired by story’s end.

And so I took the farm set­ting and that essen­tial rule and I mixed in some silli­ness. And a few sur­pris­es. And a bit of a guess­ing game. And then there’s this oth­er thing:

When I was a young moth­er, my house buzzed with two high-ener­gy lit­tle boys named Scott and Michael, a haughty cat named Felix, and a bounc­ing, exu­ber­ant, over­ly affec­tion­ate Labrador retriev­er named Nemo.

Hard­ly a night went by that Felix didn’t come tip­py-paw­ing his way onto my bed to rub his face against mine, purr and pil­low and final­ly plop down on my chest to… so annoy­ing! … clean himself.

 “Go sleep in your own bed,” I’d say. Gen­tly, I’d shove the cat off the bed and he’d stalk away.

Ahhh!

I’d just be drift­ing off when…

Omph!

A fan­ning tail and a lick­ing tongue that felt as if I was being slapped in the face by a wet, piece of baloney would awak­en me.

 “No, No, go sleep in your own bed,” I would cry, push­ing and shov­ing and wip­ing my face.

With a reproach­ful back­wards glance, Nemo would slink off to his own bed in the cor­ner of the room.

Ahhh!

Now I could sleep, right?

Hard­ly.

Then came two gig­gling boys. Plac­ing their plump, lit­tle hands on my cheeks they would beg, “Can we sleep in your bed?” 

And I’d move over. Make room. And they’d wig­gle beneath the cov­ers. Then those per­fect lit­tle boys in their footie paja­mas would snug­gle in, snug­gle down.

Ahhh!

Bed­time at the Flem­ing home.

It’s a moment all par­ents have expe­ri­enced. And while my sto­ry depicts —SPOILER ALERT—a girl and her cat snug­gling in at story’s end, my hope is that par­ents will see them­selves in the sto­ry. Most of all, I hope they will make their own snug­gly moments by shar­ing this book with their lit­tle readers.