Cup-and-ball

What do you do when your child wakes up to the sound of his pubescent brother screaming and swearing and banging things, and can't get back to sleep?

What do you do when he crawls in to bed beside you and curls up in a ball with his feet on your stomach and his nose pressed to his knees and will not look at you?

What do you do when he quietly confides in you that he had a bad dream where he left home to escape "the angry" and "waited out on the street to be adopted but no one came so I found three cardboard boxes and only lived in one to confuse anyone who wanted to find me"?

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You curse yourself inwardly for being the catalyst that started his brother's angry fit.

You stroke his hair and tell him that you will never let him live in a cardboard box. That you will keep looking for him, however long it takes. That you will look in every cardboard box you see and search the whole world over until you find him and that when you do, you will hold him tight and bury your face in his hair and breathe him in until he agrees to come home - at least for a bath, because living in a box has made him a bit smelly (this makes him giggle). And if he won't come home, you'll live in the cardboard box next door until he decides where he wants to be.

You make him laugh, because he knows you won't live in a cardboard box, but the image in his head is a funny one of you being too big for the box and sticking out of all the corners.

Your heart leaps when he finally looks up at you. You nod solemnly and say "thank you for telling me" when he takes pity on you and tells you to "just look for the box with my drawings on the outside"

You fall asleep, listening as his breath becomes slow and steady, breathing in the smell of his hair. A Mummy cup and a boy ball, believing ...no, knowing... it will all be better in the morning.