Existential metonymy

A few nights ago, an hour or so after I put my son to bed, I heard noises coming from his room. I quietly climbed the stairs – noticing that his room light was turned on – and stood quietly outside his room peering through the gap in the door.
He was playing quietly with a toy; a near blank look on his face – the blankness itself somehow signalling an absolutely determined concentration: the unquestionable seriousness of play.
A few moments later he put his toy down and went to the window. He opened the wooden shutter and looked out for a few moments then came back to his toy. The same blank look, the same lack of self consciousness. The same singularity.
I was softly torn. My son was alone, completely, and semed vaguely content with the condition – his play so serious, his explorations so quiet and punctuated only with soft sighs…
In the morning I asked him why he got back out of his bed…
“No me sleepy, daddy”
Why did you open the shutters?
“Me want to look at the dark.”

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