Tag Archives: Sleep

Courage at Twilight: Memory Foam

Leave a reply

Dad announced his hips hurt when he slept, the mattress was too hard, and he was driving to R.C. Willey that very day to buy a memory foam mattress topper so he could sleep better.  The topper came folded tightly in a box.  We unwrapped and unfolded it, laying it out on the floor.  It looked terrible, all lumpy and crimped and uneven.  “Unfold on flat surface; allow to expand for 48 hours,” the instructions read.  “Forty-eight hours!” Dad exclaimed.  But by evening, the memory foam seemed evenly expanded, and we positioned it on the mattress and made the bed with pretty cotton flannel sheets that Mom liked.  As Dad climbed into bed at 3:30 the next morning, after reading and munching (and napping) since 11:00 the night before, he sank quickly and comfortably into the three-inches of memory foam.  Before long, though, he wanted to roll over, and found himself stuck in the conforming crater.  To make matters worse, the flannel sheets grabbed at his cotton pajamas like Velcro.  He could not move.  Mustering all his strength, he pushed and pulled himself out of the foamy abyss.  Instead of sore hips, that day he complained of intense pain in his chest between his ribs (left side) when he breathed.  Doctors and EKGs and imaging and blood tests ruled out a heart attack or stroke or blood clots in his lungs—he had simply pulled some muscles, though it hurt like hell and felt like death knocking at his door.  Back at home, he and Mom pulled off the “damned” memory foam topper, and it has sat on the floor in a crumpled heap since.  Maybe I will try it on my bed.

 

(Photo from Amazon.com.  Used pursuant to the Fair Use doctrine.)

Courage at Twilight: Nap Time

3 Replies

I never take naps.  Not because I don’t become sleepy on a lazy Sunday afternoon or a sultry weekday evening, but because upon waking from my naps I feel awful and ornery and not particularly happy about being alive.  And then there is the problem of sleeping at night after napping during the day.  I know people who take daily 20-minute “power naps” and wake up happy and refreshed, full of vim.  Not me.  But for Mom and Dad, naps have become necessary and pleasurable parts of the daily routine.  At their age, the mere act of living is fatiguing, requiring rejuvenating naps.  And after Dad mows the lawn or Mom finishes the laundry, they are ready to settle drowsily into their recliners, where sleep overtakes them.  They awake cheerful and ready for the next round of life.

 

(Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay.)

Jam and English Muffins

9 Replies

Jam and English Muffins

English muffin halves, toasted crisp, with butter and blackberry jam.  When I wake up irrevocably at one-something o’clock in the morning, bladder bursting, feet tingling, back twisting, stomach chafing for food.  I just know.  I know that to wind back down I have first to wind up.  The perfume of burnt bread wafts soothingly and intoxicatingly from the toaster.  In sleepy waiting reverie, the harsh click of the popping-up startles.  First the butter—used because it tastes richly divine, and why eat at all unless the food pleases?—then the blackberry jam—not too much—or maybe strawberry—I like to alternate.  One smallish crispy bite of muffin.  One sip of cold whole milk.  Slowly.  Savoring.  One lamp lit to illuminate the book, and the fleece covering bare cold feet and other bare skin and undergarments.  A bite and a swallow.  Mmmm.  Since I’m up anyway, awake and comfortable, enjoying a muffin for two minutes, I might as well read.  Brian Doyle’s enchanting, funny, touching essays are right for this quiet moment and are just short enough and just long enough to finish with the last bite and sip.  I read about hummingbird hearts the size of pencil erasers, and blue whale heart chambers the size of a room a man could walk through.  I read of heart surgeries and the fear of loss and the pain of loss and the reconciliation to loss.  I read of love and beauty and whimsey and the mystery of a loving soul.  I read of how parents learn to live for their children, to see in their children the heights of heaven and the depths of anguished concern and the desperation of loss and the ephemeral and the letting go of what cannot ever be possessed or controlled.  Or I read from the Bible: about Paul telling the Romans and Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians and Hebrews about that man Jesus, full of grace, the very Son God of the Father God, full of grace, full of truth and light.  Or I read in the Book of Mormon about whole civilizations who turn from the God they know, turn intentionally away from him and his simple system for personal and societal peace and happiness—why would you reject what you know and love, all the truth and peace and light and joy, only to exterminate each other in a tempest of rage and blood and hate?—or the account of Jesus coming to them, descending, beaming his glory, radiating his light, his scarred palms outstretched for them all to feel and to witness forever, this Jesus come to teach and to correct, come to comfort and to heal, come to establish his order on earth.  Finished with the food, and the word, I snuggle into the fleece and the couch and work to think big divine universal thoughts, but all I can achieve is to almost understand something bigger than this big small world, all I can manage is to almost feel by mental reaching touch the grand blinding serene Mind hanging out behind the veil of the infinite universe, that Creator, and the elegant laws of the cosmos and the evolutionary laws of life and DNA and of the amazing simple brilliant law of love, love one cannot measure on a scale, love one cannot reduce to an equation,  love that is the greatest force in the universe for hope and for reformation and for redemption, love that allows forgiveness and invites a stretching reaching higher farther vaster than we thought possible…  Sweet respite, this, these tangible almosts…  Knowing I cannot ascend, yet, to where I wish, yet calmed and satisfied and inspired and touched, and fully awake, I know I can descend again now into sleep, and stay asleep until morning, though I do have to brush my teeth first.

Finding Sleep

2 Replies

20160720_061318

I went to bed early one evening, overcome by fatigue, stress, over-stimulation, and worry.  But I could not sleep for all the ambient sounds that my ears so perfectly picked out.  Instead of sleeping, I scrawled out this poem.  Was it really sleep that I needed?  Or did I need the ability in the moment to find joy and wonder in all that surrounded me?  Did the ear plugs help or hinder my state of being?  Let me know what you think.

FINDING SLEEP

Bulbous beetle sees
my nightstand light
and bounces his exoskeleton
against the vertical trampoline
of the window screen,
bounces three times,
his lace wings rasping like
sheets of stiff cellophane;
he can’t enter into my room
to reach the light he longs for,
and we both are the better for it.

Incorporeal sounds sail through—
a filly whinnying over his weaning,
a puppy straining and yapping
at her collar and leash,
our cat defending her kittens
against the neighbor’s surly tom,
children screaming delightedly
as they run at night in the grass,
only to bicker over turns
on the round trampoline—
they all drift in
to settle upon me
like a New England Bible
on a dying man’s chest.

Orange plugs twisted into my ears
dull it all, stop even
the crooning of the crickets
and the breeze’s inviting whisper.

Dog (Poem)

2 Replies

100_1040

From 100 yards away the neighbor’s dog howls in the night.  I don’t know how they sleep–I sure am not sleeping.  For extended periods he barks, a deep bellowing boom.  Though I am enjoying the cool night air of early Summer, I have to shut the windows and shove orange plugs into my ears to block out the noise.  It would be silly (I find myself thinking) to call Animal Control–this is the country, after all.  And I am too fearful to confront them.  After months and months, the dog moved away.  I’m sure he was a dutiful dog, but it was not a tearful parting.

DOG

The neighbor’s dog—
an underachieving, if dramatic,
German Shepherd—
has a great deal to say
most nights, at 01:13, or 04:22, or 05:41. Continue reading →