Sometime during the Obama
Administration, I stopped sleeping.
Perhaps it began during my
daughter’s high school years, when I lay awake in bed on Saturday nights,
waiting for the reassuring scrape of her key in the front door. There’s a chance
it followed the 2:45 a.m. emergency call from my mom in 2013 when my dad had a
stroke. Or maybe it’s a Pavlovian response to forgetting to shut off my iPhone
one too many times, the muscle memory of incessant, round-the-clock buzzing as
emails stack up like virtual cords of wood in my inbox.
Whatever the cause,
nowadays the minute my head hits the pillow my senses go into overdrive. The
rhythm of the ceiling fan ricochets in my ears. I think I smell something
burning. My leg itches. I’m blinded by the tiny sliver of light peeking out
from beneath the window shade.
And that’s nothing
compared to my train of thought, which goes something like this:
Do I hear a radio? I wonder if it’s coming from next
door. Sounds like Queen. I miss Freddie Mercury; I should send Jenna that
Youtube video pitting him against Kanye West singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Wait. Is
Bohemia called Czechoslovakia now? Damn. I should know that. Why did I never
learn geography? It was always my Achilles Heel in Trivial Pursuit. Hey, we
should play that the next time my family comes over. Or maybe Scattegories. I
really should sort throughout all our board games in the coat closet. Crap—I
need to pick up my coat from the dry cleaners. How many years has it been since
our neighborhood dry cleaners closed? Time really flies. Time like an
ever-rolling stream. Or is it ever-flowing stream? What is that from?
I get up and pee.
I return to bed,
determined to think loftier thoughts. But then, unfortunately, I do.
I think about the election.
And then the day’s
headlines run like a ticker-tape through my mind.
400 Syrian refugees drown
in the Mediterranean.
Another child killed in a
drive-by shooting in Bronzeville.
ISIS burns women alive for
refusing “sexual jihad.”
San Bernadino, Charleston
and Sandy Hook.
Taliban starves town into
surrender.
Former Speaker of the
House convicted.
Boko Haram forces 50,000
to flee their homes.
IDF uncovers new Hamas
attack tunnel.
A shriek rends the
night. It is our elderly tabby, prowling
the house and yowling like a drunken yodeler. The vet thinks she has dementia.
Who knew that cats get Alzheimer’s?
Alzheimer’s; ugh. Horrible
disease. And how scary is that Zika
virus?
The clock blinks at me:
12:39 a.m.
I get up, do plantar-stretching
exercises and lie back down.
I close my eyes, practice
my yoga breathing and will my mind to go blank.
I awaken at 2:58 a.m in a
miasma of dream fragments.
And this is how it goes.
Every night, instead of sleeping, I take a series of naps.
In between, I contemplate
whether it’s too late to prune my lilacs and if Jenna needs a meningitis
booster vaccine, why it seems impossible to find dresses with sleeves or a live
person to answer the phone at a doctor’s office, how to make a vegan version of
my daughter’s favorite pasta and if Alice Hoffman’s newest book will be out
before I go on vacation.
I worry about my mom. And
global warming. And honor killings.
I rifle through my mental
inbox, weighing themes for the next annual report and annual campaign, framing
stock photo shoots and video concepts, outlining speeches and solicitation
letters. Sometimes I get up and write little notes to myself, which in the
morning light may be comprehensible, but rarely prove the brilliant insights I
perceived them to be at 4 a.m.
Then, sometimes, I pray.
For an end to sickness and famine. For the eradication of war and hate. For
peace.
And I sleep.
