First, of course, it was the "no kids I can catch up with my sleep on weekends" lifestyle that kept me awake. Then it was pregnancy, which is to
sleeping what French manicures are to football: one had nothing to do with the other. Then there were the middle of the night feedings that started promptly at two in the morning and lasted until I was wide awake and couldn't do
back to sleep if Tony Bennett dropped into my room and crooned me a lullaby. When my kids were old enough to sleep through the night, my body apparently decided I'd already had all the sleep I ever needed and I quit sleeping
through the night. This happened about the time I crossed into my forties, when everything from my memory to my topography started shifting like a U.S. Senator voting on his own retirement benefits. It wasn't enough that my
parts were all heading for a permanent vacation on the south end of my person or that I hadn't seen my car keys in two years, but sleep – the thing I missed the most when my children were little – completely eluded me now that I
really could sleep late on the weekends.
Before I entered the phase advertisers like to call the "Golden Years" I thought attending a live concert or visiting a foreign country was exciting. Now that I'm able to navigate
the New River using my own thighs as a map, I'm more inclined to get worked up over an entire night of sleep without once getting up to visit the bathroom.
Isn't this a pitiful confession? A woman who might have once aimed
at something lofty – say, a seat on the space shuttle or a Nobel prize – is now fruitlessly seeking something as mundane as eight straight hours of sleep. And I'm not alone in my quest for a full night sans potty break, either. No,
when I wake up in the morning, the first thing my spouse and I do is compare how many times we had to trudge to the bathroom during the night and whether or not we were able to go back to sleep afterwards.
So – you might
ask – why don't I just not drink any liquids before I go to bed? Well, du-uh. Don't you think I've tried that? At first, I figured, don't drink anything after say 9:00. Well, that didn't help, so I kept nudging the time downward,
until finally I was sitting at the dinner table trying to eat my dinner without anything to drink. I could do it as long as we didn't have Italian food, which always makes me thirsty. But still – the bathroom time continued to add
up.
Of course, that's not the only thing that disturbs my sleep. My spouse snores (although he denies it), my feet get cold and I can't sleep if it's too light or too hot or too noisy. And sometimes, when the bed has fresh
sheets and it's incredibly comfortable, and the temperature is just perfect and my feet are warm and it's dark and quiet and my husband isn't snoring and I don't have to use the bathroom all night long – I still can't go to sleep.
Maybe I should quit trying and just get out of bed and put that time to some good use. I could read an encyclopedia or maybe even write one or teach myself to speak Chinese or bake a wedding cake or knit a car cover.
Or – who knows – maybe I could even find those car keys.
