Second Daughter: A Mother at Night, a Princess in the Morning
On the days I return home after a 32-hour shift, my second daughter sticks to me the whole time.
When I'm eating, she's on my lap.
When I'm helping my eldest son with his studies, she's on my lap.
When I'm folding laundry, she climbs up my back, and when it's time to go to the bedroom, she demands, 'Piggyback!'
Thinking, 'She's being quite the clingy child today,' I get into bed with her.
As we lie down in the dark room, her little hands go 'tap, tap, tap' on my chest.
With her soft, warm hands, she keeps an exquisite rhythm that seems to match my heartbeat.
'I'm definitely going to fall asleep before the kids...'
Just as I think that, she says in a small voice,
'You worked hard today, too. Go to sleep now.'
She spoke to me like that.
In reality, I still had dishes to wash and needed to prepare for tomorrow.
I was thinking, 'I wish she'd ask her siblings to do that tapping instead,' but before I knew it, the clock struck midnight.
In the end, I was put to sleep by my little mother that day.😂
7:00 the next morning.
'Aaaaaah!'
A scream that sounds like a death metal vocal rings out.
Of course, the culprit is my second daughter.
I was making breakfast for the other children, so I watched to see what would happen, and my eldest son, our family's master of support, went to check on her, saying,
'What's wrong?'
After about five minutes, my eldest son returned and said, looking a bit apologetic,
'Second daughter says she won't wake up unless it's Daddy.'
...No, no.
She was just awake with that death metal scream, wasn't she?😅
When I go to the bedroom, my second daughter is smiling, but her eyes are squeezed shut.
When I call out to her softly, 'Second daughter...'
She goes, 'Zzz... zzz...'
This time, she's faking her sleeping breath.
It seems she's a princess waiting for her prince to come and pick her up.
But no matter how you look at it, a prince is not my character. For starters, my face is reptilian and my nickname is Lacoste.🥺
So today, too, I bare my front teeth and, fully committing to the role of a low-level villain, say,
'Hee-hee-hee! What a cute little thing we have here,' as I carry the princess off to the living room.
Then my eldest son welcomes her kindly, and that's when my second daughter finally 'pretends' to wake up.
Watching that scene, I think to myself every morning,
'The prince's role is definitely for my eldest son.😆'
At night, she's a little mother.
In the morning, she's a princess waiting for her prince.
Thanks to my second daughter, our family's mornings and nights are still filled with little plays today.☺️