Struggles with the demons of the dark

Last night Edith called out in the dark, "Mama! Mama!" Thinking she had woken up and was scared, I went in to her. I found her still asleep but restless. As I leaned over the bed, I saw her fists clenched on top of the covers and heard her say in her sleep, "I need to be brave. I need to be brave!" Poor thing.

On the way to school today she was musing aloud on snakes, a recent fear/fascination, and I commented that she hadn't worn her snake shirt recently. She recalled the shirt, then asked if she could wear it to bed.

"Sure," I said, suspecting the reason for the request. "Will it help scare away the monsters?"

She agreed that it would, explaining that the snake on the front would come to life and bite the monsters if they came near. But it wouldn't bite her, because it was her friend.

"Like Alice Roosevelt had a pet snake, named Emily Spinach," Edith recalled, having learned this from a picture book recently given to us. "But Emily Broccoli would be a silly name for a snake."

Indeed.