Insomnia as a Gift

I woke at a quarter before three this morning. I tried to go back to sleep for a few minutes before deciding it was a lost cause. I got up, went outside, and was surprised that the temp was only 41F/5C. So far, we're not having much of an Indian Summer.

I had trouble getting to sleep big time throughout my childhood. I could seldom seem to stop my mind from racing. Often, I'd turn to reading. I discovered reading for pleasure in earnest during the third grade, thanks to Mrs. Goodrich, who helped me discover its joys.

My insomnia got better when I turned fifteen. It never went away entirely, but the torturous nights of my childhood were more or less left behind.

In recent years, I've had a different kind of insomnia now and then: I'll wake up early. That never happened during my childhood.

I've never liked getting up early in the morning, but I've always enjoyed being up before dawn. I sit here now at my laptop, while Rhonda and Dylan sleep away, and I feel like I'm watching over the world. I remember being eleven years old on Sunday mornings, delivering newspapers before dawn. I felt much the same way. I felt like I was watching over the world from a bicycle.

There is a spiritual feeling that comes over me when I'm awake before dawn, like I'm hooked into life more intensely. Life's secrets seem barely out of reach before dawn, instead of somewhere over the horizon. The joys of life crowd out the burdens and the sorrows. And always, there's the feeling that I've been tasked with, well, watching.

Maybe that spiritual mandate doesn't include watching over the trash. I was lazy last night, and didn't take the trash out all the way to the trailer. (We live kind of "out in the sticks," y'know.) The raccoons managed to tear into the trash between the time I first got up and now, and I didn't hear a thing. Maybe they have a spiritual mandate to punish me for being lazy.

Sneaky bastards.