The Ancient Mariner's Sleepless Night

Okay! Hands up, everyone who wants to hear the story of my sleepless night. No rush. I'll wait.

 

No hands? No one wants to hear? The story of my yawning night just makes you yawn? Hard cheese, for here it is.

 

I turned off the light at ten, having spent a lovely ninety minutes getting into Ian Rankin's most recent Rebus book. And I fell asleep almost instantly. Isn't that good?

 

At 12:38 (don't you just love digital clocks? Without the digital I might have said "at about 12:30"; but this way I can be exact). At 12:38 I woke up. Dear me, I have to pee. So I did. I padded back to bed in what passes for the dark in our urban setting, where streetlights and spotlights and various other outdoor lights afford us 24 hours of daytime.

 

And I crawled back into bed. No instant sleep this time. My mind began traveling through the minutiae of the day past and the days to come: a conversation with my son, a reminder to myself to call middle child on Friday, her fiftieth birthday; a complete wardrobe search (mental) for just the right thing to wear for my upcoming reading and then a different right thing to wear on Sunday evening for the Music Toronto fundraiser at Scaramouche (the secret delight I'd been clutching to my bosom ever since we reserved our spots).

 

Having revisited each of these topics interminably, I had the abrupt revelation that I wasn't even making an effort to fall asleep. I was just fretting. So I made a conscious effort: I relaxed. I breathed. I followed each breath in and out with my scatty mind, willing it to stick around and not go investigating the shallows of my being.

 

I breathed. I counted breaths. I breathed, pausing after every exhale. I recited a four-line mantra with four successive breaths. Again. Again.

 

At 1:30 I called a halt. I was not sleepy. And no, I had not indulged in caffeine that day. It was not my fault!

 

I wish I were the kind of person who can work at night. I might have begun editing and sorting the pieces for my reading, and then I could have put my corrections into the computer. I could have cleaned that computer/crafts room, its table piled high with rubber stamps, gel pens, and folder after folder of essays from the past and present that I don't know how to file. I could have gone to the kitchen and whipped up a batch of gluten-free cookies. I could have lifted myself from the bed and gone to meditate.

 

Instead, I got up, wrapped myself in my oversized dark blue velour robe, and took my glasses and Ian Rankin into the media room, the only place upstairs where I can sit comfortably and read (except for my bed, of course, but the light would inevitably wake up my husband). So I read, immersing myself in the goings-on of Rebus, the brilliant but dysfunctional and authority-averse Edinburgh cop (now officially retired but back by popular demand). He is an over-the-hill scamp. You keep wanting to tell him to shape up! But his methods work; he catches the bad guys. I devoured the latest Rebus until 3 a.m.

 

At last, I thought, I must be tired. I went back to bed, setting the alarm this time because with missed sleep I couldn't count on waking up on my own. That was at 3. At 4 I still had not been asleep. I got up and rubbed a sleep-friendly essential oil on the back of my neck.  At 4:30 (that digital clock is so efficient) I was still awake.

 

Some time after 4:30 I drifted into a non-restful sleep, from which I was dragged at 6:15 into a semblance of wakefulness.

 

Now there. That wasn't so painful was it? You heard the whole thing and didn't even fell asleep during it because my narration was enthralling. But next time, you might want to move away from me before my bony claw catches your sleeve and holds fast while I relate some future story of sleeplessness in Toronto.

 

 

Copyright 2014 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com