Time Served

Rather then toss, turn and fight the gods of sleeplessness for another several hours, at 2am I throw off the covers and crawl out of bed.  It's Christmas Day, I remember hazily, and the bright side of insomnia is that at least  if I do manage to fall asleep, I won't have to get up before sunrise.  At this point though, it seems like a very large if - as weary and cantankerous as this old body is, it still wins out more often than not and all too often sleep proves irritatingly out of reach.  I'm too tired to fight and stress over it so I rouse the dogs and send them out into the yard, turn off the television, and begin to fill the bathtub for what I hope might be a sleep inducing soak.  I can see the moon through the trees, softly halo'd in the dark sky and surrounded by stars.  Except for the insomnia, everything is calm and in sync and I have this vague, restless feeling that any more sleep is like time served - over, done with and behind me.

The house is full of books but reading has never been much of a remedy, I'm too easily caught up between the pages.  Sleeping pills scare me and just the idea of hot milk makes me a bit nauseous.  I feel edgy and short tempered and anxious, even a little resentful of the quartet of cats sleeping so soundly all around me.  When I go back to bed, I do manage to snatch a few hours in dreamland but then it begins to rain and there's thunder overhead.  The cats wake and start their morning prowling and the dogs turn restless, one whines into my ear softly but persistently.  

Merry Christmas to you too, I tell them sulkily, knowing that no matter what might suit me, there'll be no comfort and joy until they're tended to.

It's a hard and cold rain and the morning is dark and dismally grey, not the kind of Christmas morning we were hoping for, I'm sure, but there will still be presents to open, carols to be sung, stockings to be taken down and enormous dinners to be consumed.  In my small house, there'll be shrimp and andouille sausage dip on water crackers with black olives and celery and prosciutto and a half bottle of champagne to wash it all down before I watch Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed for the 100th or so time.

And maybe a nap or two in between to make up for last night.  

By the time the dogs and cats are fed, the dishes washed and dried and the bed made, Bing Crosby is singing "Ave Maria" in Going My Way and I have a nest made up on the sunroom couch.  The rain doesn't sound quite so dismal anymore and the sky is a little less grey.

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish, pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear.