Sleep Like A Baby

Someone once told me that if you can get your infant used to sleeping in odd places, the baby will be much easier to travel with when you are staying away from home. Being a young and inexperienced mother, I took this very seriously, as if Dr. Spock had brought it down from Mt. Sinai carved in stone, and I, therefore, had my first-born napping all around the house. I’d lay him down on the couch, and on the bedroom floor, in a basket in the foyer, and occasionally under the dining room table.

I think of this now, gripped by insomnia, and of how often I wake up on the couch, or on the floor, or at the foot of the bed. I haven’t slept under the table or on the kitchen tile beside the stove, but it would be no more awkward than how I attempted to explain my current behavior during a family intervention:

My 12-year-old son began, “Mom, why do you always sleep on the couch? Are you getting divorced?”

“She was passed out on the floor in the den this morning. I think she’s drinking,” my teenage daughter contributed acerbically. '

“Honey, we are all worried about you. Is there anything we can do? Is there something you’re not telling us?”

“No. No. Not at all,” I said reassuringly. “I’m just, umm, preparing for our upcoming trip through New England.”

No one in the house believes me when I say I can't sleep, because when they get tired, they sleep. They shower, put on pajamas, brush their teeth and go to bed. I shower, put on pajamas, brush my teeth, and turn the volume on the television down to a whisper.

Insomnia is a bitch. I am tired all the time, except of course at no o’clock in the morning when my mind races and my legs are restless. By day, I suffer from diminished capacity, and all that is left is a very primal need/want response: I hungry, I thirsty, I itchy, I pathetic. By night, my brain becomes ruler of the universe and says an emphatic “NO” to sleep at 10:00. There is not as much as a yawn at 11:00. It smirks at midnight and holds firm at 1:00. Finally, sometime between 2:30 and 3:30, it acquiesces, depending on how compelling the late late show is.

A gal pal said I don’t sleep because it is the last bastion of normalcy and I refuse to allow myself to get back to “normal.” In other words, if I can sleep, work, raise kids and perform all the other day-to-day activities required of well people, I am saying I'm all right, and no longer grieve—and there is no way in hell I’m letting people off the hook that easily. I think there is a lot of truth in that, but damned if I know how to move on. I’ve tried almost every technique, herb, and sleep aid known that won’t cause me to commit murder in a REM state or drive my car to a laundromat somewhere in New Mexico.

I think I'll try a little reefer. All I want is to sleep like a baby.