the lion sleeps

I woke up painfully early this morning, around 4:30. Unable to coax myself back into sleep I lay on the couch listening to the groans and squeaks of the house. The "silence" was broken but the thump of little feet plopping down out of bed and scurrying down the hall. The girls are still young enough that they each have their own distinctive shuffle. G. crawled up beside me on the couch and showing none of her fathers resistance to sleep was quickly murmuring dove-like coos punctuated by little wheezes and gasps. As sweet as my daughter is in these moments there is one thing for certain, I would never be able to sleep now. Little elbows and knees are the equivalent of sleeping with a bag of stones. I suppose the easiest solution is to lead her back to her own bed and then make for mine and hope not to disturb J. or baby. But I have never been, well, resolute in executing this kind of plan.

Sleep is precious, and yet I seem to continually make poor choices when it comes to acquiring any. Some of the problem, to be sure, is born of the best intentions. I will usually wake two or three times in a night. Usually once between twelve and two, and then again closer to morning between five and seven. Once woken it usually takes time to fall back to sleep and am often fearful of waking J. during these periods of restlessness. The quickest solution is to move to the couch. However this avenue can be blocked if one of the girls, in their own sleepwalking daze has managed to stumble there before me. If this is the case, I usually opt to take their bed instead, unless, of course it is G. who happens to sleep on a top bunk, the ladder to which requires a kind of acrobatic grace to ascend which I utterly lack at two in the morning, much less any other time. The other option is couch number two which shares none of the comfy qualities of its neighbor. Basically I have become like a house cat, roaming through the house in search of a nice quiet place to lay down for a few hours, my only strength is that I try to keep consecutive hours of rest and not nod off at odd hours of the day curled up on the divan or in the red chair that no one ever sit in unless guests have taken all other available seating.

I keep telling myself that these little interruptions of sleep will pass as the kids get older, but I suspect the truth is that I am teaching myself bad habits that could last a long time. My Grandfather was asleep by eight o'clock every night and up before four in the morning. "It is the best time to get anything done" he used to tell me. My father seems to share in his father's propensity for early mornings. As a teenager I would literally train myself to sleep later and later in the mornings, only to rise to my father's recriminations. I suppose at the time I thought it was because he was jealous, but I suspect now it was because he had trained himself to sleep in the one way that best suited his lifestyle.

My god, can you imagine? I have always supposed that like myself and my dear wife, most of us are struggling to get the prescribed eight hours and long for those mythic saturdays when we can eek out just a few hours more. Could you imagine getting enough sleep every night? It would be like finding the perfect job with the corner office. I am envious of people who rise and fall with their internal clocks, always managing to find the exact right amount of sleep to fit their day. Surely there can't be such a person? If there is, I think I would hate them.