i’ve reeeally not been a nap person. napping in the daytime makes me feel kind of out-of-it, like i have to start the day all over again. but in these new days of insomnia…sleeplessness…big swaths of night wide-awake…well, the circumstances are a little different.
it is much easier for – him – to take a nap.
fact of the matter is, it’s much easier for him to sleep. any time. any where. sleep. sleep. sleep.
i’m not sure how he does it, but he lays his head down and he’s gone. meanwhile, i am tossing and turning and trying to figure out why his even breathing is so utterly annoying. yes, i know – i am simply jealous of his sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.
and so, i thought i’d give it a chance – a daytime nap. i knew it would never work. i knew i’d lay down and be wide awake, despite being utterly exhausted. i knew the daylight would prevent me from sleeping. i knew he’d sleep in a second and i would be yearning to just get-up and do-something.
so much to think about. the middle of the night is a mashup festival of thoughts.
sometimes our level of profundity in the night is astounding. we converse and deep dive and solve all the world’s problems, quoting nietzsche and rumi and mary oliver and john muir.
and sometimes, it is less deep, less intense, less – well – anything at all. just random. and one of us – i’m not admitting to being the one – goes on and on, pondering, pondering, pondering – all aloud – convinced the other one of us – again, no pointed fingers here – is actually listening.
meanwhile, the dogga jumps up on the end of the bed – groaning – and yawns, falling into a deep slumber, his paws running, running, running, in dreamland.
sometimes nights are forever.
*****
and, speaking of random…that reminds me of a great 70s song that has nothing to do with this because we are both right here….still, great song!
the thing about being awake before the birds in this most-amazing-spring-like-february-roll-into-march is that you hear the birds start to sing. from the very beginning, the very first bird, that first tweet.
most of the time i do not sleep well. it appears that i am falling into the statistics of masses of middle-aged women – all of whom have insomnia, all of whom exhaustedly lay awake at night, all of whom ruminate and perseverate the night away, and maybe some of whom – like me – revel in the sound of first birds.
and this week? well, after a wonderful last weekend, the universe musta felt like we needed a little pounding. i know you know what i mean. sometimes weeks are like that. and sometimes…well, even the best cup of coffee in the world won’t get you out of bed.
and in the middle of the night – him sleeping like a baby and snoring like a freight train – while i am sitting there, wide awake, gazing adoringly at his smug-sweet-sleeping-snoring face – as much as i remind myself my insomnia is not his fault – it is neither his joy or his angst – it is not his to own or relinquish – it is not his to have and to hold – he tends to bug me just the teensiest-tiniest-minutest-nanoscopicest-infinitesimalest-bit.
she reached into her rainbow bag and pulled out two rainbow buttons, handing them to us. “brilliant!” i thought, while also thinking we should have brought our “be kind” buttons and given them out as well. this darling little girl, accompanied by her mom, stood in the center of the blocked-off pridefest road, twirling right and left, gifting festgoers with happy faces.
i was awake most of the night. it wasn’t until sometime after the birds began showering the rising sun with song that i fell asleep. middle-of-the-night musings often keep me awake these days. the harvard medical school reports that insomnia is present for 35% to 60% of women after menopause. i’m seriously thinking someone needs to do something about this.
so it is in those wee hours of the night i ponder everythingunderthesun. it is like my own personal pablo neruda book of questions – random, open-ended and with no real answers. all over the map, i revisit growing up, walk through previous houses, go back on vacations, have conversations all over again, list groceries, think about deferred house maintenance, slink around the edges of new creative projects, send positive energy to beloveds. i wonder about the universe answers – if they will drop in, like a sticky note from the heavens above. i list gratitudes – simple, like this tiny girl’s happy face rainbow buttons – and complex, like straddling the line of relevance. i list worries – like the day to day challenges of aging, the challenges of a world fraught with superficiality and division, the challenges of the environment, the heart-challenges of most important relationships. the one thing i do not do is sleep.
i’m pretty sure i am not necessarily capable of solving everything at 2am. and 3am is worse.
but a couple minutes after 4am – when the birds gather in our neighborhood trees and sing up the sun and its roygbiv – and i am present – that is when most of it – the kaleidoscope of life – makes sense.
in the middle of the night – as i lie awake – i can hear the trains. not just the haunting whistles of freight chugging by or a late passenger railcar, but a train or two in the yard, idling. the sound hits me at just the wrong frequency – i am hyper aware of its rise and fall, the pulsing of it. once i hear it, i cannot un-hear it. it stays present and i stay awake.
nevertheless, the tracks hold sweet mystery and, each time i see a train, i wonder its destination, i wonder its journey, i wonder its freight or its passengers. i had not ever stood in the middle of a rural track, bent down – almost kneeling, photographing, until recent years. the track – a classic portrayal of perspective, narrowing further away.
i stood in the middle and looked both ways. south and then north. the south curved into the woods, the north was a straightaway. i turned back south.
in the right-now there seems no straight path, no tight focus, no horizon point that is clear. the tracks curve into the woods, beyond my sight, beyond my imagining. i meander. it makes me wonder.
we seek next and idle in our thoughts in the night, not-knowing. it’s liminal space, a diesel engine that needs to be kept warm for the next day, a time to be present on the tracks, bent down, looking for classic perspective. we are attendants.
i hear the haunting whistle in the wee hours and consider this journey.
it’s a recurring theme. and variations. sleep. no sleep. partial sleep. disturbed sleep. sleep with snoring. sleep sans snoring.
i don’t remember having this problem earlier in my life. it’s not like i wasn’t worrying about things then, so i don’t know what the difference is. other than menopause. and hormones. and…ummm…aging. a fun trilogy.
we try to have good conversation in the wee hours. we generally have a banana (somewhere we read that bananas are sleep-inducing plus they are easy snacks in the middle of the night.) if we are still starving, we have been known to get up and make pancakes. having mid-night pancakes always sounds better than actually making pancakes in the middle of the night – tired and a little ornery from not sleeping. but once they are made, it’s pretty dreamy to indulge in a few maple-syrup laden pancakes at 3am.
david doesn’t really have trouble sleeping. his troubles come from my trouble. he is a generous sleep-giver-upper on those nights, for which i am grateful. he mustn’t have the trilogy, the whole trilogy and nothing but the trilogy. plus, somehow or other, he places all angsting to the side when he lays his head down. he just goes to sleep.
(to the tune of “the old gray mare”) sing: a good night’s sleep just ain’t what it used to be, ain’t what it used to be, ain’t what it used to be. a good night’s sleep just ain’t what it used to be…many long years ago.”
yiiiikes. no kidding. a whole night of sleeping – like from late evening when you lay your head down on your sweet pillow all the way through the wee hours of the night to sunny morning when you wake blissfully rested and dreaming of a hot mug of coffee in your hand and zero aches and pains – is elusive. how utterly annoying. and a repeated pattern. over and over.
middle age, hormones (or the lack thereof), medications, angsts, the world, too little water, too much water, d snoring, me snoring, leg cramps, foot cramps, shoulder twinges, a pillow too flat, a pillow too puffy like one that makes you feel like your head is on top of the empire state building and your body is in the lobby, a full moon, the neighbor’s motion light, the wind, a skunk somewhere out the window in the ‘hood, sirens, the trains idling on the tracks for hours on end, wishing for midnight pancakes…the list is endless…reasons to be awake.
this was last night. this was sunday night. this was monday night. this happens allthetime.
how is it that you can be yawning-up-a-storm, tired-tired-tired, yet, you go to bed, sink under those yummy covers and are wide awake? or…you wake up after the first sleep cycle and nothing – absolutely nothing – will let your mind rest.
random pieces of life pass by in ruminating-world: memories, questions, ponderings, worries, conversations. bits and snatches of life from waaay back, from yesterday, angsting about tomorrow or the next day.
i had a dear group of girlfriends who tried to meet up once a year (or as close to that as possible). we had lots of shared history and shared lots of the ups-and-downs of life from our little corners of the world – each of us with different paths and challenges. we all had nicknames. mine was “fretta”. i don’t have the opportunity to see them anymore but i’d say the nickname is generally still fitting. i do fret.
now, david, on the other hand, sleeps.
i’m not foolish enough to think he never frets, but when he lays his head on the pillow and pulls up the blankets? he is gone. i don’t know where all that ruminating stuff goes at night. i am guessing to where the wild things are.
me? i carry my wild things with me. we fret together.
there is no such thing. “too tired to snore.” uh-huh.
there is also no such avoidance as “i just won’t sleep on my back.” or “i don’t snore when i turn my face to the left.”
sometimes, snoring happens.
and before you get all up-in-arms about my picking on him, i, yes, sometimes snore too. though naturally, it is delicate whilst in sweet slumber and sounds a bit like a beautiful melody floating over our pillows, wrapping us in a symphony of joy. uh-huh.
there is nothing worse in the middle of the night – pre-menopausal-menopausal-post-menopausal and wide-awake, ruminating over life and all its stuff, desperately trying to go to sleep, staring at the moon out the window, hot-flashing and then freezing, covers-off-ing-covers-on-ing, mushing and re-mushing the pillows, trying to relax through the tiny aches and pains catching up, hungry and thirsty and ignoring the tinkle-urge – than having the person next to you start snoring. like a semi coming through your bedroom. uh-huh.
reverse threading 