"There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

An old picture of Billy in front of the "house bed."

My son's in the closet.

Literally. Right this minute he is sitting in his closet with the light on. Playing with socks.

For the last couple of years, he's had this bed that looks like a little playhouse. It has a top bunk. Ahem, it had a top bunk. Now it has a messy storage area full of crap we try to keep out of his reach. Like the ladder to the top bunk.

Billy sleeps in the bottom bunk, inside the house. And for a couple of years, we had to lock it to keep him from getting up at night, turning on the stove, starting the car, or any number of other horrors that went through our heads. The staircase in our new house, also known as the “death plunge,” is so steep I practically have to rappel down it. Sometimes carrying two children. I now have the quads of one of those guys who can pull a tractor with his teeth.

So you can imagine why we didn't want him capering on the staircase in the dark. At the best of times, Billy's progress down a flight of stairs looks a bit like those guys who chase a wheel of cheese down a hill (it really happens – in Dave's home town).

Baby gates don't work. He uses them as hurdles. They keep my mom off the stairs, but even Willow has figured out how to open them.

But we decided that this summer, after his fourth birthday, it was time to set Billy free. We committed ourselves to taking him to the bathroom each and every time he exited his room, which we were sure would be frequently, at least to start. But we theorized, at least he would learn that if he needed the potty, he could leave his room and find Mama and Daddy.

We opened the door of the “house bed,” as we call it, and Dave took the first shift, stationing himself outside Billy's bedroom door, between him and our Black Diamond slope. He was told, in no uncertain terms, that any time he left his room, he would have to go to the potty.

Thirty minutes passed. No Billy. Then forty-five.

Dave put his ear to the door. He could vaguely hear something, so Billy was awake. He pushed the door open and could see a light on under the closet door.

He flung the door to the closet open and a wide-eyed Billy stared up, from his perch on a mountain of white socks. “Back,” Dave commanded him, and Billy dutifully returned to his bed.

I won't bore you with the repetitions of this scene that took place every 15 minutes for the next two hours. We threatened, we locked the closet door (Billy's closet door locks from the outside; we have no idea why – something left by previous owners – we assume they kept rabbits or embarrassing relatives in there). But every time he returned to the closet, pulled out his sock drawer and went to town.

The next night we started the process all over, no longer bothering with sitting outside his door. Clearly, he had no interest in anything outside his bedroom.

On my first “shushing” visit, as we call it, I found him in the closet, wearing three pairs of socks on each foot and pulling on another. Startled, he threw all the socks into the air and ran for the bed.

Take two: Billy hears me coming and runs for the bed before I get to his room. I know what he's been doing because when I enter the room #1: The light is on. And #2: A cloud of white socks comes flying out the window of the house bed, like a junkie trying to get rid of his stash:“I don't know whose #%*@ socks those are, officer. Don't try to pin that #%*@ on me!”

Take three: I find him in the closet, wearing enough socks on each foot that he could safely walk on hot coals. He looks up at me with those big blue eyes welling with tears and says, “Hug,” holding out his arms to me. He's wearing at least six pairs of socks on each arm.

At that point, I gave up. I told Dave he could be the bad guy for a while, because I could no longer keep a straight face.

I woke up at about 3 a.m. that night and had a crazy, obvious, miraculous thought: He put on his own socks.

He put on his own socks. We've been trying to get him to do that for two years! How did that not occur to me?

I fell asleep with a big grin on my face, realizing my glass was, indeed, half-full. My sock drawer might be empty (everyone's sock drawer is now empty, as this temporary obsession has spread throughout the house) but my cup runneth over.