One of the things I most look forward to in my time apart from family is the opportunity to rediscover my own rhythms… with food and work and most of all (and particularly in the throes of this final hormonal coup) SLEEP.
Ahhh, to sleep through the night!
Without the torment of teenagers traipsing and a snoring bedfellow (with an aging prostate.)
But alas, 5 nights & counting, and it wasn’t meant to be.
There are many factors to blame for this injustice.
But there is also something else.
Curiosity.
How is it that I have come to expect that my sleep be insulated from the world around me—from the weather, from fellow human beings, from four-legged ones, from neighborhood celebrations, from worrying about the news and from the sounds of sudden middle of the night emergencies…
Who I am to deserve such isolation from the life we share?
When I was a young mother faced with friends & relatives who had schooled their infants into sleeping through the night (while my toddler was still woke to nurse), I read something that stuck with me:
“Parents and doctors aren’t entitled to sleep. Waking comes with the job.”
To be awakened.
Not a bad thing.
And so the same might be true of the homeless people who disturb my walks downtown, and the immigrants who disturb my sense of belonging, and the strangers who disturb my sense of community.
We are infinitely among.
How might we better abide this?
How might this abiding lend itself to a softer surrender into all that is and into a fiercer voice for that which truly shouldn’t be so–for anyone.
The Empty Nest Diary 