This might sound strange, but I have been sleeping better during this pandemic. Of course, there is a low bar for strange these days – and months. I’ve suffered with insomnia for several years. I fall asleep okay and then I find myself eyes wide open at 3:00 AM. I usually drag myself to the couch while my dear wife sleeps like a drunken sailor. She sleeps better than any person still alive and it makes me freaking jealous.
My dear wife. Every. Single. Night.
Pandemic sleep for me has been very deep. Remember diving for quarters in the deep end of the pool when you were a kid? It was such fun and I loved that sensation of swimming closer to the bottom – feeling the water getting colder and the sounds from above becoming more muffled. I could hold my breath for a surprisingly long time and I often went home with the most quarters.
Me at 3:00 AM.
My dreams have run the gamut from sweet to crazy to frightening to funny. Just last night I dreamed I was hanging out with Nicolle Wallace from MSNBC. Yes, she is my spirit animal but that’s just funny. I call these my Insta Dreams because I follow these folks on Instagram. The best one so far was a few weeks ago when JLo and I were sitting on a patio and I was telling her how much I loved her Super Bowl appearance and that I named my new car after her. She got me.
We could all write a book.
I have dreamed a lot about my dead parents over the past few months. I am grateful that these dreams have been peaceful and comforting. In most of them, we are together and doing something quite ordinary – like making dinner.
The other night, I dreamed I was with my mother in the kitchen of the house I grew up in. I was telling her goodbye because I was heading back home. In this dream, I lived in California which is pretty cool because I’ve always dreamed of living there. I guess that falls under wishful dreaming. Anyway, my mother was wearing a dark blue velour robe – which was historically accurate – and we hugged for a very long time. Almost as long as I could hold my breath in the deep end all those years ago.
I’ve dreamed of former partners – one sweet, one not – again, historically accurate – and friends I haven’t seen in years. A few nights ago, I was on the Metro in DC with Ann and Cathy, two much younger women I worked with over 20 years ago. We were chatting away like it was yesterday, and the cherry blossoms were in bloom. That period I lived in DC was one of the happiest times of my life and it was lovely to revisit it in a dream.
Of course, not all my dreams have been sweet. I’ve dreamed a lot about broken relationships with family and friends that remain unmended. Some nights I feel like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life reviewing all the what ifs of my life. These dreams are distressing and yet I linger in them and when I wake, I am often filled with regret and despair and this pandemic feels even more ominous to me. The hangover of these dreams can last a while and I carry a heaviness throughout the day. I feel like I’m wearing one of those lead aprons they put on you when you get an X-ray at the dentist’s office. Those days are longer than most.
George Bailey. My dream doppelganger some nights.
I have spent a lot of time pondering what these dreams mean and I always come back to mortality and the unfinished things in my life. Light, right? Sometimes I wish I were a puzzle person – that seems like a far less bleak pandemic activity than pondering one’s own mortality, but I don’t have the patience for that. I think about trying to put the pieces of those broken relationships back together, but it feels so overwhelming – a 5,000-piece puzzle of the color white.
So, I write to try and help me make some sense of these things that make no sense these days. My friend, Jen, is a professor of English literature at UNCG. She is the kind of smart that makes you feel like your brain is not set on the same speed as hers. She is always taking notes – as if to not miss anything – and she recently wrote a beautiful essay, “Finding the Courage to Write.” Click on the title to read it – and I really hope you do. Jen talks about writing against the despair of this pandemic and connecting with as many others as you can. I love that phrase – “writing against the despair” – it feels hopeful and makes me feel like if I keep writing, I can hold my breath long enough to make it back to the surface with that quarter safely in my hand.
Bookends 