The most comforting thing for me as a child was my bedtime stories. I had a Play-Skool pink, plastic canopy bed that had frilly, white sheets and blankets along with a few other odd, child-sized quilts my grandmother made for me.
I doubt I ever slept early, though never too late considering how many times I would want to hear Go Dogs, Go! by P.D. Eastman in one night, and have to switch over to my favorite, The Monster at the End of This Book which was all about silly Grover from Sesame Street.
I remember my mother getting extremely nauseated by the mere sight of Go Dogs, Go!, but my great-grandmother, who often was the one reading The Monster at the End of This Book, never got sick of reading it to me. She would read it to me over and over, always in voices, and then we would talk about whatever my three year old mind was thinking of until I was off to dreamland.
I had a sizeable library of Dr. Seuss, P.D. Eastman, and other classic children’s authors, along with a few contemporaries, by the time I was five. And even when I knew how to read, I still wanted a bedtime story, though as children are wont to do, I was the one reading those stories to my mom or dad, whoever wasn’t working afternoon or midnight shifts that night.