A small story:

I woke up as I usually do right now, around six, walked into the hallways and was surprised to see light under Kid's door.

"Hello?"

"Hello, mother."

"You're up! Want to hike with me?" I asked stupidly.

"Ugh, don't say things like that. No, I'm going to bed."

"Good night," I said as the light went out.

Kid has always, always been a night owl. When she was tiny, this worked in my favor. Other people's toddlers woke for the day at 5:30 or 6:00 am; Kid woke somewhere around nine and wasn't pleased about it.

If you created a word cloud of her childhood, the phrase in the middle would be GET UP. As you might imagine, the teenage years - when even the most cheerful lark becomes a temporary night owl - offered many sleep-related opportunities for a free and frank exchange of views.

She went to France for her senior year of high school. The French are not interested in accommodating your sleep cycle, or anything else. We were pleasantly surprised to never get an email from the school telling us she had never attended periods 1-5.

She then got into a program in her first-choice college where there is a preset schedule for your classes. You may not like 9am, but you will not like it while sitting in class, taking notes. She has a 3.8 or 3.9 average.

This, sadly, confirmed my tiniest and most fact-free suspicion that night owls are just doing this to be difficult. Kid is a night owl, Consort is a night owl, Consort's brother ran bars and nightclubs, Consort's father was a cameraman on SNL, for chrissake.

I KNOW BETTER.

And yet.

So much nagging has gone into "Sleep hygiene," merrily ignoring how little of that I do. "You should stop staring at screens," I say to them, my eyes glued to the Twitter timeline.

They are both saintly, in that they do not decide sleep hygiene includes slapping me.

One of the larger things we as a society have jettisoned during this quarantine is the idea of time.

Get dressed in pajamas at 3pm? Sure.

Streamed yoga class at midnight? Why not.

Bake a ham at dawn? Good for you.

Finally fix that computer problem for 15 hours? YEAH.

As the saying goes, "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once." Well, everything is happening at once right now and guess what?

It's not terrible.

Our house is on what Consort calls "Submarine protocol"; during most hours, no more than two of us are awake.

I get up at 6 am, work out, come back, live my solitary life. At around 10, Consort wakes up, works until about 4, usually falls asleep for a couple of hours, during which time Kid wakes up, comes out, has some breakfast. Once Consort wakes up I am, at most 90 minutes from bed.

The two of them then spend all night doing homework or work, going to sleep around 4 am.

I have no control over any of this.

I have not used the words "Sleep hygiene" once.

This morning was new, though. The Kid and I have never crossed paths going to bed and waking up.

I hiked and came back at 9 to the aggravating sound that someone had hired a wood chipper and was enthusiastically getting their money's worth. I glared at them and thought, "Why are you doing this in the middle of the night!"

I then went in and ate some breakfast lasagne.

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