About a third of our lives are spent sleeping. When I was younger, this was lost on me. I climbed in bed and fell asleep like a rock and slumbered until someone (or metallic noises) made me wake up. I discovered coffee in the eleventh grade, which gave me reasons to be nicer to people in the morning. It seems that us creative types tend to bloom in the evening, rather than when the sun is rising. I married a man who looks like a handsome lumberjack, has zero creativity, thrives on schedules and wakes up like he's ready to belt out a song from "Oklahoma!" He can't sing, but he sure looks like he's about to. Can't you just hear Curly belting it out? - "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain, and the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain!" I am a woman but I can sing baritone better than soprano, so I try this song out often on my grandchildren. But never in the morning. No, the snail comes slowly out of its shell, dampening all surrounding enthusiasm. My dear husband must love me, because he should have hightailed it to other parts of the world by now, given the sad state of affairs he often finds himself in during early morning encounters with his wife. I try, truly. But then again, there's his own inability to stay awake past 7:00 p.m., so it's just a mercy of God we haven't killed one another. He's the sun and I'm the moon. There's a lot of gravity involved and we apparently need each other.
Since my Daddy died, there have been a few nights that I've spent with Mama. While I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to ever sleep there with her, her little dog jumps into the bed (aliens kidnapped my mother the day they got that dog), she's done strapped on her CPAP machine and is snoring like a boss. She sleeps on her back and doesn't wake up until eight hours later. I haven't done that since my womb yielded up our first child 38 years ago. She has always told me she wouldn't live past 60, but she's now 81 and I'm thinking she's gonna outlive us all. Clean living and a clear conscience might just be the ticket.
A few years back, I saw some Barbra Streisand movie, where she had this massive bed and about 500 pillows in it. It was then that I decided it must be okay to have more than one pillow. Maybe I could find a way to sleep! It started with one of those body pillows when I was first pregnant, the best thing since sliced bread. Ken thought somebody else was sleeping in there with us; searches in the night to hold my hand (or anything else) became more difficult. We've added a nice mattress, cushy cover, squishy comforters and heavenly sheets these last few years, and I've added a big ole pillow to mash against the headboard...it keeps my hand from going asleep. Then there's my wedge pillow, to ward against gastric reflux. Another regular one to prop me up from behind my back makes me feel very secure. Then there's my tiny memory foam pillow that I put under my neck. It takes quite some time to arrange all of this; heaven forbid I forget my book or my glasses and have to start over, but when I'm done, it's quite the nest. I put my CPAP on and I can hear the faint sound of beach waves emanating from my phone in the next room. When we have company, I have to pull all that mess off our bed and put it in the closet or they'll believe someone (or several people) are sleeping in there. It's just ridiculous. My good, steady, loving husband doesn't say one negative word about it. Love is a many splendored thing.
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