My partner has been having trouble sleeping lately. She wakes up, tosses and turns for a while and then gives up and goes downstairs, has a bite to eat and lies down on the couch to read. Just as in reading before bed she never makes it more than three pages before she’s back asleep. That’s all fine. We all have our ways to cope with sleeplessness. But the other night, after going to bed earlier than usual, she awoke at 5:00 AM which seemed like a perfectly reasonable time to get up. I woke up when she got up and considered getting up myself but then, nah, back to sleep for me. She did her usual routine and when I came down at 7:00 she was fast asleep on the couch. She slept another hour there. Once awake she was lamenting that she had not gotten up at 5 and that it was so late but said she didn’t want to just get up then and sit down in front of the computer (working partially from home with much to do). I suggested she try what I do in the mornings: First thing – out on the deck overlooking the woods and creek, breathe in the fresh morning air, do a few stretches and maybe a short walk with the cat around the house and then make coffee. She complained, saying that she’d have to turn on a light in the bedroom to find something to put on other than a nightgown and didn’t want to wake me up. I was surprised to find that she didn’t have something immediately at hand to put on even in the dark. This morning when I woke up early and got dressed in the dark and went out to breathe in the fresh morning air and walk the cat (don’t laugh) I started to wonder why it just seemed totally obvious to me that I should always have something to put on within reach before going to bed.
I was in a high-rise hotel once when the fire alarm went off. The flashing lights and loud alarm in the middle of a deep sleep was disorienting enough but it was winter and we had to evacuate the building to spend an hour in the parking lot. It took me quite a while (in emergency terms) to find clothes, shoes, coat and hat and get out of the room. Had there actually been a fire (false alarm this time), smoke in the hallways and all that, I might not have safely made it off that 7th floor.
Once, while staying with friends, there was the sound of someone breaking into the house during the night. Disoriented from waking in a strange bed I couldn’t find my way around to put something on but fortunately someone else woke up and was able to scare the intruder off.
Another time at home I was awakened by screeching tires and the sound of a horrible crash on the road outside my house. Again, I wish I’d been able to dress quicker and find a flashlight to get out there and be of assistance sooner.
But probably the final straw was when Rocky, the local raccoon, was trying to make off with the metal bucket of bird seed that had been accidentally left out on the deck. I heard it rolling along the deck and ran downstairs and out the door in time to see him in the moonlight standing upright at the edge of the highest part of the deck with front paws on the still sealed bucket looking first defiant and then amused. “One more move and the bucket goes over the edge!” he seemed to be saying. And then, “And you look really ridiculous standing out here stark naked like that.” Fortunately I was standing next to the outdoor faucet and garden hose and quickly turned on the water and hit him between the eyes saving the birdseed and sending him scurrying. But that image, naked man confronting masked bandit with garden hose, still haunts me.
And so no matter where I am, some clothes to quickly put on and something for my feet sit right next to the bed — always in the same place. And I never wake my partner up when I get up and dress to enjoy the early morning air. Paranoid? Well, I did used to be a Boy Scout.