When I was four I spent a night alone in the hospital in an oxygen tent. I remember very clearly the pink plastic butterfly attached to the I.V. in my arm, the way it rested on top of the white tape the nurse had wrapped carefully over the needle. I remember the view from my bed, walled off by clear vinyl, and wondering what I was supposed to do when I had to go to the bathroom. I remember, too, patiently explaining to somebody (a nurse?) that no, I wasn’t having trouble sleeping, I simply slept with my eyes open. What else could be the explanation? All I ever remembered from the night before was lying in bed, eyes wide open, waiting to fall asleep. Something told me this was a strange explanation, though, because I also remember pretending to be asleep every time somebody walked past my partly-opened door. Open-eyed sleeping would be hard for most people to understand.
* * *
There is a certain clarity to the hours I’ve spent awake at night. The moments that stand out are dream-like; an understandable thing considering their close proximity to sleep. They carry the understanding and detachment of dreams. The vividness, too. They are marked by the darkness and quiet that surround them, framed by solitude.
* * *
Another hospital bed, in the middle of the night, holding a newborn who looks up at me with eyes that are impossibly dark, alert and wise and deep.
Huddled in bed between my parents after a bad dream, safe only here, under these covers, no matter how cramped or hot it is. My own bed is cold and dangerous.
Leaning over the crib railing, dizzy with exhaustion, stroking silky-fine hair and singing, praying that each of us would soon find sleep.
Sitting on the couch in the living room in the middle of the night, knitting a scarf for my mom. There is nothing else I can do, nowhere else I can attach my mind or heart. The tiny new flicker of life inside of me has turned to ash, and everything else threatens to come unbound and drain out of me along with it.
A dorm room late at night, and lots of reading left to do. The satisfaction of underlining things I want to remember is palpable. So, too, is the feeling that my mind is changing shape, making room for new ideas, stretching itself wide as a single phrase pulls everything into focus.
Farther back, in high school, finishing an art project. Realizing that this—the process of creating something—is the one thing that can keep me happily awake all night, fully absorbed.
Lying in bed and unable to sleep because of a first kiss...my first night alone at college...an argument with my mom...the night before my wedding.
Standing in the hallway listening to the rhythms of three sleeping children, feeling that as much as I love them I have once again failed them completely.
A cabin in northern Minnesota the summer before my 11th birthday. My first time at overnight camp, and the two weeks have covered a lifetime. A younger girl is crying because she is homesick, and I let her sleep next to me for comfort. I miss my own parents fiercely.
* * *
I’ve always considered myself a morning person. I like to be up early, and even though I enjoy sleeping in sometimes, I get restless if I stay in bed too long. Daylight is what feels real; I wear it as naturally as my own skin. But these moments at night give off their own light. In the darkness, when everything around me is still, the things I fear and the things I love are illuminated, and everything shifts into focus.
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