One recent night around 2:00 AM, my daughter’s distressed voice, calling for me, jolted me out of deep sleep. Barely awake herself, she was looking for her stuffed doll (named Dolly, obviously), the one without which she cannot sleep, because without clutching it in a very precise way, she cannot suck her thumb. And without sucking her thumb, she cannot get back to sleep. This vicious cycle makes perfect sense in her six-year-old mind, even if it might not in yours. Thence the cry of alarm at 2:00 AM.
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Nadya Williams
Nadya Williams is the Books Editor at Mere Orthodoxy. She holds a PhD in Classics from Princeton University and is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church; Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity; and Christians Reading Classics (forthcoming Zondervan Academic, 2025). She and her husband Dan joyfully live and homeschool in Ashland, Ohio.
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