I am a Christmas Eve insomniac.
When it comes to falling asleep on the big night, nothing works for me. Not a cool pillow, nor warm milk. Not melatonin nor martini. Not even the new mattress-in-a-box we just purchased that promised "breathable open-cell foam for all-night coolness."
Tonight, at some point, I will hit the sack and it's anyone's guess when the room will actually fade to black. It's a childhood malady that never flushes from the body, like the chicken pox virus that resurfaces in midlife as the shingles.
I don't sleep well on Christmas Eve, and it's a lifelong curse.
This is ironic, because on normal nights sleep is my best friend - as easy to dial up as, say, ESPN on the TV remote. At times in my life, sleep has been an antidepressant, a deadbolt lock I could deploy against mental stress. Nothing like a two-hour nap to change the subject, I always say.
Mark KennedyBut I look back on Christmas Eves of my youth as if they were nasty bouts of food poisoning. There was tossing and turning. Tepid sheets. Suffering. There were hours spent staring at the ceiling, listening to midnight mass wafting from our Magnavox console TV in the living room.
Oh, here comes "O, Holy Night."
Oh, holy cow! Midnight mass is almost over, and I'm still not asleep.
Now tension - bordering on panic - loops through my brain.
Oh, no, it's so late. Oh, no, it's later still. Oh, no, it's too late.
My parents told stories about me waking up at 4 a.m. some Christmas mornings, only to survey my Santa gifts and then crash back into bed by sunrise. My body didn't know how to manage the excitement of Christmas morning, and so I became paralyzed by anxiety.
It must be hereditary because our 11-year-old son seems to have the same malady. Actually, his insomnia starts several days before Christmas.
"I've been awake for 45 minutes," he'll announce, arriving at the foot of our bed.
The other night we had a talk about this, trying to practice for tonight's big challenge.
"So what do you do on ordinary nights to fall asleep," I asked him. "In my mind, I swing a baseball bat - back and forth, back and forth."
"Why do you swing a baseball bat?" he asked.
"I don't know; it calms me down," I said.
"I try to think of something nice," he said.
"Like what?"
"Well, I think of the time I met the president," he said. "When he stopped and bent down and shook my hand and said, 'How are you doing, little boy?' "
"Yeah," I said. "That was pretty cool."
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"I was in second grade, so that means three years ago. It doesn't seem that long ago. It still pops in my mind a lot. I didn't want that day to end."
"You'll probably always remember that," I said. "That's a nice story to put you on the path to sleep. It's really just about changing the subject in your mind."
"Yeah," he said. "But it's still hard. Especially on Christmas Eve."
I guess there are worse things in the world than being overexcited about Christmas. So what if we lose a little sleep.
Maybe tonight I'll try thinking about what Santa will bring me.
Could be a Louisville Slugger.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6645.