Jet Lag

Alleke asleep
Photo by kellyandapril.

I looked at the clock. It read 2:04. This time I was in Spain, I was in bed, and it was the middle of the night.

My mind was like a scratched CD, playing the same fragments of thought over and over again in my head.

For the moment, my mind was busy scribbling Spanish on a white board. I was practicing what I would say to Alex, a potential landlord, mentally rubbing out words with my fingers, and writing in a better Spanish word until I had a few sentences I liked.

I was supposed to be sleeping. I rolled over and tried to see television fuzz.

I looked at April. I could see the whites of her eyes glowing from the light shining in the room from the hallway.

I wondered how long she had been awake.

Alleke lay next to her, turned inward, one fist resting on April's chest, holding her shirt.

"She's better at this than we are," April whispered in my direction.

I nodded into my pillow.

Alleke hadn't seemed to mind being in Omaha, Chicago, London and Madrid all in one day. She had kept to her normal nap routine, rubbing her eyes to tell us when she was tired. She even got most of a full night of sleep, despite being in mom's arms on the airplane, in the baby carrier with dad at the airport, buckled into a car seat as we buzzed around Madrid, and finally in bed in the guest room where we are staying.

We all went to bed on Spain time. April and I wondered if Alleke would sleep. She was on an American schedule. We were too, but we had done this before. We had our tricks. We got lots of sunlight. We took a long walk. We kept ourselves busy unpacking our bags.

In the end, we went to bed tired, but never fell asleep. Alleke just went to sleep--as if it were simply a matter of setting her clock ahead six hours.

Tomorrow morning Alleke will wake up ready to play, and we will be zombies.