Bringing the sleep with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata

Rosie was restless tonight, asking me to tell her stories from when I was a little kid. So finally I told her the story of how her Aunt Sarah and I used to share a long room, with our beds in each corner of one side of the room. On the other side of the room, I told her, was a shelving unit, and on a shelf in the middle of that was where we kept our record player.

When we were really having trouble falling asleep, we would put on a record. And then when the song was half done, the record would stop and one of us would have to get out of bed and go flip it over, because a record has the music recorded on both sides, unlike a CD, but the record player could only play one side. One of us would turn the record over, and we would listen to the rest of the music on the other side.

And the record we would play, I told her, was the Moonlight Sonata. And then I brought it up on YouTube on my phone, started it playing, and put the phone face down next to her on the bed. She started to sit up, wanting to look at it, but I told her there was nothing to see, just lay down and listen.

After a few minutes, she said, "It's making me sleep, mama."
"Good." I said.

A short while later I heard her breathing deepen, and she really was asleep. I turned the music off, and snuck out of the room.

Living in the future can be amazing sometimes, especially when it can connect you with the past.