In Love with Sleep

Morpheus, god of dreams

At various times in my life I have loved being asleep. In the whirlpool of adolescence, on weekends, I could easily sleep till noon--except for those times when Dad decided I needed to help him with some chores. And even during the school week, I would sleep till the last possible moment. Dad had an old school bell that he would ring in the morning, a bell whose piercing peals were designed to urge us upward (out of bed) and downward (to the breakfast nook), where we could have a "family breakfast." Dad, who'd grown up on a farm in Oregon, must have thought my brothers and I were aliens--spoiled ones, at that, as we sullenly and silently slurped our cereal in the morning.

Later, a teacher, I couldn't sleep in, of course--except on Saturday and Sunday. So on weekends I would crash long hours. I think my record on a Sunday was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. After I got married, for a while, Joyce and I both slept late on weekends.

Years went on ... and I remembered something my dad had once said when, absolutely flabbergasted by the habit of both Dad and Mom of getting up and going around 5 a.m., I'd asked him why? And he'd replied, "When you get older, Son, you'll see."

Hah! No way!

Way,

The older I got, the easier it grew to get up early. The last decade or so of my teaching career, I was generally the first one in the building--by 6-ish. I got a lot done in those quiet, uninterrupted hours.

Retirement.

And I'm still getting up early, about 5:30 most days, every day hearing Dad's prediction from a half-century ago. I've found that my most productive hours are in the morning, and if I don't get some things done then, it's unlikely--no, impossible--that I'll get them done later in the day.

Very late in his life, Dad spent a lot of the day sleeping in his easy chair and, later, in his wheelchair. Once I asked him if it bothered him, sleeping so much. And his reply: I like being asleep because in my dreams I'm young again.

Dad had been a great athlete (football, track, baseball), and I hope Morpheus was kind to him, that Dad got to dream all the time of running and leaping and doing whatever-in-creation-he-wanted-to-do. He'd earned it.

And now, in my mid-seventies, I'm once again finding the profound appeal of sleep. I know, you see, that Bad Things Are Coming. Sure, I've always known this in an intellectual sense (everyone dies, etc.), but now I'm experiencing it in a very personal sense. Just in the last couple of years I have lost dear friends, former students, family, ... And much more (and much worse) hovers on the horizon, glimmering with dark light.

So I guess I've figured: If I can just stay asleep, none of those things will happen. And so I nap. And go to bed early. And in some ways hate the waking, the waking that will carry me, inevitably, one step closer to all that I now dread.