| |
12,000
Nights by
Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal | |
I
do not like springtime. I have a constant headache in the spring. I do not like
that in the spring you can be both cold and sweaty at the same time. In the spring,
despite the fact that I am forty-five years old and entirely too old for them,
I always get a pimple on my back. It is never where I can reach it and it is always
the sore kind. I really, really do not like that. There is more. I do not like
the wind. I do not like the sneezing. Worst of all is my springtime sleeplessness.
I have a theory about springtime and insomnia and my theory, in it's entirety,
is that you cannot sleep properly in the springtime because of the frequent changes
in the air pressure. Ask around, ask your friends and relatives, and I think that
you will hear from many of them that they have been tossing and turning these
past nights. Perhaps they have had strange and disquieting dreams, if they slept
at all. Perhaps some of them, like me, opened their eyes to check the time every
hour on the hour all night long. They woke, thinking that they were already awake,
to find their legs tangled in the covers, the top half of their bodies were freezing
cold while from the waist down they roasted. The cat would not get off their feet.
And their spouse was breathing in a very repetitive and annoying way. Despair
niggled at the periphery of their consciousness. They perhaps considered drastic
life changes. Throwing their pajama pants out the window. Sending a swift and
pointy elbow into the ribs of Sleeping Breather. Catricide.
But it will
pass. It is only Spring and it cannot last forever. The air pressure will find
a place it likes for the summer and settle down soon and then we can all breathe
a sigh of relief and get a good night's sleep. If this weather is not good for
sleeping, it does give you time for thinking. I have been thinking a lot lately.
Night after night after night. Just me and my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, my
memories and all of it accompanied by the steady, raspy in and out and in and
out of Rip Van Michael's incessant nosebreathing. Breath Right Strips for Father's
Day again this year, though he will not understand why and I will not tell him.
Last
night I thought about a lot of different things. Between midnight and one I thought
fondly of my Grandma. She's a peach. I love her. Then between one (which came
sooner than you might have thought, so I might have dozed a teensy bit) and two
I began to feel a little sentimental about my Grandma. I have not seen her in
months. I think that I will go to see her this weekend. Between two and three
I remembered that there were several things scheduled for Saturday which I could
not change and did not want to miss. I imagined my darling Grandma in her cozy
little house, snug as a bug there with my aunt just as comfy as two peas in a
pod. I guessed they might chat about me sometimes and imagined that they chatted
about me being their very favorite of all the kids and how I always had been .
. .
Between three and four I imagined my Grandma had been sound asleep
for hours and I thought that if she knew how much trouble I was having sleeping
she would be very sorry for me. I wondered if I would live to be her age and decided
there was a better chance of that now, what with my recent lifestyle changes -
the no smoking, no coffee, more fiber, plans to start exercising very soon, probably
next week for sure. I did a little Mental Math. I estimated that if I did live
approximately as long as my Grandmother has lived so far it meant 12,000 or so
more nights. Long, long dark nights.
Between four and five my eyelids fluttered
open long enough to check the time twice. Those eyelids finally closed and I sighed
a comfortable nose sigh and did not open my eyes again until 45 minutes after
the time for which I had failed to set the alarm, an unfortunate oversight which
did not occur to me one single time the whole time I was thinking and tossing
and imagining that Grandma had always loved me best. One night down and approximately
11,999 to go. They can only get better. |
|
|
