The nightlight at the end of the tunnel

She lay there listening as the baby stirred in the next room. Soon there would be a wail and she would have to hoist herself from the bed, stumble through the darkness and feed him. Exhausted, frustrated, feeling a little like she'd been tricked she wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. She dreamed of sleep, but it was not to come for years.

Lying on the couch wrapped in darkness she heard the children playing far away in some distant part of the house. The guilt grabbed her heart again and again, but the darkness would not let her go. It hadn't seemed like too much to ask him to love his own children.

Sitting on the balcony enveloped by water shadows from the pool, staring at the moon dappled gardens below, waiting for her teens to come home. It seemed tragic that she had so much and so little all at the same time.

Grown children, grand children almost grown, the world turning into the one she'd dreamed of all those long years.

Now sleep calls to her like an endless echo chamber.