Sleep. Naaa

June 5th, 2025. A Thursday.

I made lasagna. My wife and I ate on the back porch, talked until the evening cooled, then went upstairs and burned through a few episodes of Game of Thrones. Around 10:30 we made our rounds. Lights, doors, alarm. We exchanged a whispered good night and went to sleep.

I slept until morning.

I mention this only because it was the last time.

The next day, I brought the Boyz home.

Captain and Morgan arrived together, which is the only way golden retriever siblings should arrive. As a unit, a coalition, a small and furry fait accompli. They were assigned a dog bed on my side of the room. This arrangement lasted approximately one evening before they determined that “my side” was, in fact, their side, and that the bed itself, a tall poster affair with some architectural dignity, represented less a boundary than a challenge.

The siege phase began that first night and ran for weeks. Nightly attempts to scale the frame. Nightly failure. Nightly stereo whining at the injustice of it all. Two golden retrievers sitting in the dark, harmonizing their grievances at a volume carefully calibrated to ensure no one slept through the negotiations.

They eventually abandoned the high ground strategy in favor of tunneling.

The space beneath the bed became either a sanctuary or, depending on the night, a reenactment of the Crater at Fredericksburg. I’m still not certain which. What I am certain of is that a golden retriever skull, propelled upward with sufficient enthusiasm, produces a sound through a mattress and box spring that is both distinctive and clarifying at two in the morning.

The tunneling gave way to the sentry phase, which may have been the most operationally sophisticated period of the campaign. Morgan positioned himself on my side. Captain held the western front along my wife’s. Any movement, a repositioning, a nature call, a slight shift of weight, was interpreted as a signal. Playtime. Both of them. Immediately.

We surrendered the door.

This was not a decision so much as an acknowledgment of reality. Captain, the brainy one, had learned to operate the door handle. What he had not learned was physics, or stealth, or any relationship between the two. His technique involved placing the full weight of his considerable frame against the door, tripping the handle, and arriving in the room like a golden retriever doing a credible impression of a small explosion.

We stopped closing the door.

They sleep where they wish now. This is simply the nature of things.

I should mention what a year of this does to a person. Last Tuesday I found my cell phone in the refrigerator. I have stood in the open pantry, staring at its contents with the focused intensity of a man decoding ancient script, trying to remember why I opened the door. I have had conversations I have no memory of having. My wife finds this amusing. I have chosen to find it amusing as well, because the alternative requires more energy than I currently have.

Before the Boyz, the end of every night was simple. Lights out. A good night to my wife. Sleep that lasted until morning.

When they came I added two more good nights, said to two dogs who accepted them as their due.

Now my wife gets her good night, same as always.

To the Boyz I just say… see you soon.