When I was a kid, I only got to see my grandmother once or twice a year as she lived 1000 miles away in Canada. She would come down to Mississippi every year for 3 weeks or so during Christmas and I loved spending time with her. She lived alone for the last 30 years of her life in a small town in Canada and was in a word. Awesome. During those Christmas visits, we would spend most every night in the living room “watching the Christmas tree”. Sometimes we’d talk. Sometimes we’d just sit in the quiet. 35 years later, the quiet time during the holidays, with only the tree to light the room is one of my favorite things. 

I rolled over at 3:13 this morning and after laying there awake for 40 more minutes, called off sleep and got up for the day. This has it’s plusses and minuses. The plusses today are quiet time in front of a lit tree to plan and write and listen to the dog slurp on its crotch. The minuses. I’ll be asleep at 8. Wait. That’s two plusses. 

It’s funny how the stresses that keep you lying awake in bed fall away once you get up and walk around a little. Despite knowing that everything that’s keeping me awake will smooth out once I get up and move around, this never calms me while in bed. Seems like kind of a sick punishment for supposed self awareness. I must get up, feed the dogs, who regardless of time, believe any scrap of light from even a watch face is time for rejoice.  By this time I know it’s over. The day has begun. 

On these days that come two to three times a month, I always think. “People talk about insomnia like they have an inoperable brain tumor. It’s just stress.”  Thanks Dr. Fellows for this crack assessment. If you’re complaining about your insomnia on social media. I’m talking to you. You’re gonna be okay. Just get up and be done with it. Well and make sure you don’t have that brain tumor. 

This morning as the stabbing fog of what was keeping me awake slowly passed, I looked at the tree and thought about my grandma. First, in the broad strokes of childhood memories, the feel of the powder blue living room couch, the flicker of the lights, and reading her Stuart Little, and then through the fictional lens of “I wonder what she’d think about today’s world, and my kids, and so on.”  What would she say about supposed insomnia? I bet she’d just get up and watch the bay in her back yard. The lit tree in my dark living room as my backdrop, I sit and hope that if there’s an afterlife, that it includes UFO’s and aliens and that she’s riding around space somewhere saying “I told you UFO’s exist.”

The quiet settles in, I pour another cup of coffee by the light of the tree, and the dog continues to slurp. 

#hugsandhi5s