Sleepless Love

I don't remember what we did, what I did, at the age of three and no sleep. Don't remember no sleep. It's night 58 of clockwork waking, hour after hour past midnight, til I finally hoist her up beside me and tell her to lay down with that tone that could burn a hole through a heart. A wrangled foal, she stays down but with that sideways eye open to the upright world. Her legs twitch and find their way, every five minutes, entwined with mine. Because I'm her mama.

Because of that I go down nicely, easily in the way I brush off REM and all the other states of sleep. 57 nights I find a way to hang on to the corner of pillow, the edge seam of mattress, dancing gravity, repeating the mantra to myself. But then, hours past night and just close to dawn, I am in the audience watching the performance of bodies from a distance, wondering what are they doing?

She hasn't slept a night in her room since we moved into this house in late December. I go down easily until I don't.

Until I'm pacing down a hallway, back and forth, fuck the only word I know. In constant repetition until it's out loud and I hear it. And, finally, I wake up, night 58, to the fact that I have not slept for more than an hour or two at a time, not more than three and possibly, on the best night, four hours in a string. Fuck!

A little voice down the hall now echoes, I'm scared, Mama.....

For an hour there I am undone with anger and exasperation. That wave hits a pinnacle of air and drops, and finds conclusion in grace. Because insanity and sleeplessness and torture are simply changing acts. From emptiness, love rises from every way we think it destroyed. It wakes up inside the body, restores the freakish mind, says, walk with me - here, lay down next to me and let me hold your fear.

How many mothers are awake with me this hour......how many around the world? How many nights did my own mother lose sleep, nights in a row times four children, across thirty years between grown and teething?

Bless that force that makes us everything, if not always shamanic and ruthless and magical. It's a gritty job and so hidden behind a cultural facade. But not for me. Not tonight. It's nothin but a roaring ride!