It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, now that I’m in my second half of life, that sleep has gone the way of, well, wakefulness. I am awake far more in my bed than I am asleep.
The accoutrement of sleep take up far more space than my body: electric blanket, belly pillow, bedside books, book light, MP3 player loaded with audiobooks, a flashlight (in case the power goes off), ear plugs, a print out of yoga poses for restful sleep (which I used for about 5 days in a row two or three years ago), a glass of water, medication to be taken daily on an empty stomach, defined as being at least 4 hours after eating and at least 30 minutes before food. By this definition, I have no waking moments that result in an empty stomach other than when I first wake up. Since I’m frequently up well before I need to be, the 30-minute wait for my first cup of coffee is often completed by 4:30 am. I’m considering adding in an eye pillow that blocks out light, after seeing a couple of girls wear them to bed on the last school overnight. I don’t know where on the tower of things-to-do-quietly-so-I-don’t-wake-my-husband-who-is-immune-from-age-related-sleeplessness I’d put this extra item, so I am delaying the purchase. Instead, I wonder nightly if the light from the clock radio is keeping me awake.
I was at a local bookstore/café/pub the other night, waiting to drive carpool after an evening class. I pulled a collection of Billy Collins’ poetry off the shelf of books to glance over while having a local IPA and basket of pub fries as a break from perusing one of the finest, most appealing independent bookstores still in existence. Nothing about me fits the pub dweller stereotype, but if they have a house red and white, and truffle popcorn, on the menu, it’s clear I’m not the first non-pub person to sit quietly and read poetry in this pub.
Billy Collins, for those who don’t know, is the guy whose poem, The Lanyard, can make you weep for the sheer one-sidedness of the way children take their parents for granted. It’s not just a chick-poem, either – my husband had a catch in his throat when he read it. Childhood ingratitude crosses genders, cultures, generations. The shame when we are called out on it is also universal. The Lanyard reigns as the quintessential awakening call to the disgrace of self-centered childhood.
Until this night, though, I’d only known the one poem from him. Why is it I can’t name off Poet Laureates like some people name off state capitals? Why do I know less every time I encounter something new only to realize it’s not new, just another facet of my ignorance? The book of poems, published in 2002, was touted as New and selected. Eleven years later I’m having a house white and truffle popcorn and reading poetry as if I’m discovering new territory, just me and Neil Armstrong, charting unknown lunar landscapes and bringing our findings back to those who have never left Earth. Except that I’m late to the new vista; Starbucks, WiFi café’s, souvenir vendors and mixed-use retail centers have cropped up on the Sea of Tranquility. More for me to ponder in the early morning hours when I’m awake before anyone else.
In my ignorance, I’ve missed the entire Collins oeuvre, the way he captures the poetic of everyday experience and offers it back in accessible, approachable, understandable verse. Of course he’d be able to capture insomnia. At least one kind of insomnia: insomnia from agitation, from the relentless hamster wheel of angst, where we stay awake because our minds simply won’t quit, one fretful thought leading seamlessly to another, although none of these repetitive thought ruts lead to any new territory.
These days, my insomnia is mostly due to the simple fact that my body cannot sustain sleep longer than six hours. I’m a middle-aged woman who doesn’t sleep through the night. Blah, blah, blah. I used to fret about this, as it is pure genius to get wound up about sleeplessness. Not any more. I understand it. Understand that the price we pay for living into our 50s is that we outlive estrogen, sleep cycles, the luxury of sleeping in. Some grander scheme is at play, and if we are alive and well in our 50s, God or some other life force is going to make sure those additional years contain no wasted time.
Once I stopped fighting it, insomnia now is rather restful, a quiet time in which I no longer fret about not sleeping, or being awake too early. I’ve come to appreciate the time. The house is quiet. The world is quiet. There is almost no noise, save the regular sonorous tones of my sleeping spouse and the heater. I have given myself permission to do no useful work during these hours: no email, no bill paying, no internet surfing, nothing “productive.” It’s one of the only reliable times each day that is primarily for me. No one needs anything from me, as their needs are being perfectly met in their beds, in their sleep, in their dreams. It’s a perfect time to read, to listen to a book on tape, to sneak stealthfully out of bed and sip a cup of coffee while the skies remain dark and existential solitude is no longer a theory.
Insomnia
Even though the house is deeply silent
and the room, with no moon,
is perfectly dark,
even though the body is a sack of exhaustion
inert on the bed,
someone inside me will not
get off his tricycle,
will not stop tracing the same tight circle
on the same green threadbare carpet.
It makes no difference whether I lie
staring at the ceiling
or pace the living-room floor,
he keeps on making his furious rounds,
little pedaler in his frenzy,
my own worst enemy, my oldest friend.
What is there to do but close my eyes
and watch him circling the night,
schoolboy in an ill-fitting jacket,
leaning forward, his cap on backwards,
wringing the handlebars,
maintaining a certain speed?
Does anything exist at this hour
in this nest of dark rooms
but the spectacle of him
and the hope that before dawn
I can lift out some curious detail
that will carry me off to sleep—
the watch that encircles his pale wrist,
the expandable band,
the tiny hands that keep pointing this way and that.
Billy Collins (2002). Sailing alone around the room. NY: Random House.
The Lanyard
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Billy Collins (2005). The Trouble with Poetry. NY: Random House.