dont wake daddy

Perhaps my earliest memory was seeing my father walking down the hall late at night in a zombie-like state. Every night I would hear strange noises in the hall, and being a curious child, one night I decided to investigate. I got up and walked over to my bedroom door and stealthily opened it a crack. There was my tall handsome athletic father walking slowly down the hallway as if in a trance. His eyes were open, but he was unseeing.

My mother came out of their bedroom in her silky lacey nightgown and followed silently close behind him. When daddy got to the top of the staircase, my mother touched his arm. Slowly he turned and gazed through her. His hand came up and began stroking the fabric of her nightgown. Then when he had tightly clutched the silky material, my mother began to back down the hall to their bedroom. He followed her, not seeming to know where he was going or what he was doing. Then my mother would close the bedroom door, and I would get back into my own bed wondering what I had just witnessed.

I guess I was about ten years old, when my mother took me aside one day to explain everything to me.

"If you ever get up at night to go to the bathroom, and you see your father in the hall, you must be very quiet. Don't say a word."

"Why not?" I questioned.

"Daddy has a medical condition," she explained. "Somnambulism. Sleepwalking. He walks in his sleep."