I know my dreary mood is directly correlated to awakening before 3:00 AM. It’s one of the more unpleasant hazards, I’ve found, of getting older. I swear I was once able to sleep all night. As a teenager I could sleep for days, it seemed. It’s an elusive and nearly impossible feat now when I need all the beauty rest I can possibly get.
Catie and Riley are never sure what to make of my nocturnal prowls through the house; they barely raise a brow. Their innate sense of time tells them it’s too early for breakfast, for dinner, for a walk or a trip to the park.
I cruised the internet for a help line for insomniacs; surely they didn’t have daytime hours. I phoned in a refill for a prescription and checked the mailbox for the paper. The world is eerily quiet at that time of day.
I shouldn’t have looked through old photos last night but both my daughter and my son want a visual display for their respective weddings and I’m the one with all the baby pictures.
To be honest, I couldn’t finish the sorting before I went to bed because I started missing my oldest son. I’ve seen him once in the last year, and that’s not because he lives three hours away. Following a twelve-month period where his life went off the rails – substance abuse and suicide attempts and financial distress – he left a phone message last July and said he wanted nothing more to do with the family. He’d already exchanged his old circle of friends for a new one; I’d never dreamed he’d cast us off too.
We’d forget about him in time, he said.
So my heart was feeling heavy. I didn’t see him at Christmas or get a return phone call to the message I left on his voice mail. I was sad he won’t be going to his little sister’s wedding. They were once really close and she’s even living now in the same city as he is. I somehow doubt he’ll be attending his younger brother’s wedding in September either. I was sad he hasn’t picked up the phone or sent me an email to ask how Catie’s been doing; he knows about her illness because I sent him a message the day of her surgery. And I was sad because I knew he was in town yesterday to see a surgeon at the clinic in the same building where I work and I’d been hoping he might, just maybe, come and see me.
I’m thinking, just maybe, that’s why I couldn’t sleep last night.
It was a really long day and I was ready for a good, solid poor-me cry when I pulled into the driveway this evening. But then – oh, look – two expectant golden faces at the window, noses squashed against the glass, just as they had been when they watched me leave in the morning. I could see Catie’s scrawny tail wagging in circles and thwacking the curtains; I could hear Riley’s excited bark telling me to hurry up and get inside as I fumbled with the door key.
I’d be lying if I said Catie and Riley made everything better. But their non-judgmental, unconditional, unselfish, wholehearted loving this evening really, really, really helped. I didn’t need a cry after all.