Back in July, I had an MRI on my cranky knee. I had to lie perfectly still in a giant white tunnel and wear fat headphones to block out the thrumming of the machine. My head was not in the tunnel, which is fortunate since I have wicked claustrophobia, and I could hear the nice MRI driver talking to me through the speakers.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked from the next room as she prepared to throw the switch.
“All good, thanks,” I replied, but here is what I was thinking: For the next 40 minutes, I have to lie perfectly still in a room where no one can bother me and I can’t hear any sounds other than occasional solicitous inquires about my welfare and comfort from a kind, disembodied voice. Am I comfortable? Yes, indeed, I am.
I definitely fell asleep in that machine. I know I fell asleep because at one point the kind, disembodied voice came through the headphones to ask whether I was still doing all right. She woke me up, which was briefly irritating, but I know she has to ask. I probably got a solid 25 minutes of shuteye, and I bounced out of that place like they were giving out Red Bull.
Sleep has always been my boyfriend. Any time I get the chance, I visit him. Any time something is wrong, he is typically what I need. I have a dear friend who feels the same, and we joke when we’re feeling low that what we really need is to curl up in bed with our boyfriend.
My relationship with sleep has not always been easy, though. Sometimes circumstances have kept sleep and me apart, and I have had to conjure creative ways to get us back together.
A decade ago, when I was in the grip of the stupefying sleep deprivation that comes with mothering tiny people around the clock, I convinced my older son that it was a fun game to drive toy cars across my prone body, just because I was that desperate to lie down. Jack called it ‘gamey,’ and he thought it was hilarious.
I would indulge in thin sleep on the living room rug while my little son climbed all over me, steering Hot Wheels over my head, down my back and across Posterior Mountain. Other than the intoxicating affection I felt for my babies, my most vivid emotional memory of those years is how desperately I missed my boyfriend. It seemed sleep and I would never be together again.
But those babies are big now – Jack is closing in on 15, brother Ben is about to turn 10 and they don’t wake me up these days. I’m rarely catapulted from sleep by wailing about bad dreams or tummy aches or lost blankets or existential yearning for someone to crawl into bed with.
Instead, I slip gratefully into the arms of my boyfriend — but then surface inexplicably from that dark bliss three or four times a night to confront the glowing clock. I find myself wasting perfectly good time with my boyfriend thinking about tuition costs and do I have enough life insurance and unmanageable Outlook calendars and the $400 ambulance bill for that time we thought Ben had appendicitis and they transferred him to the children’s hospital, but he didn’t have appendicitis, thank goodness.
For the moment, sleep is eluding me. It’s like he’s not into middle-aged women or something. Weird, right?
I’m an optimist, though. By the time I reach the next phase of this ride, I’ll have mastered the art of choreographing all the traffic in my head. My thoughts will spin neatly through roundabouts and merge gracefully with my dreams. Sleep will be back, and I won’t even make him apologize for abandoning me.
For now, though, maybe I just need another MRI.
Contact Mary Fortune at thirtytensomething.blogspot.com.