Everybody Sleeps

Everybody sleeps. I can still hum the tune to the Sesame Street segment which taught me that concept. I guess it is important to encourage conformity in preschoolers. There must be security at that age in knowing that you are not alone in needing some rest in the middle of the day or shut-eye at night.


Personally, I love sleep. I have always been a champ at sleeping and staying asleep. And I have always been intrigued by sleep. I mean, what is it anyway? What is this change that comes over our bodies that takes us to another world? At one point I had even toyed with the idea of becoming a neuroscientist and studying the whole thing at Boston University. Now there's something you probably don't know about me.

I may not have ended up with a degree in the subject, but here's what I do know...it is desireable yet elusive. It is both hated and loved, scorned and coveted. Children fight against it, while their parents crave it. At some point we make the change from protesting sleep to catching zzzz's whenever and wherever we can. We've all mastered the art of sleeping during class, on a table in the library, in a car on a long road trip. We will take sleep in whatever form we can.

My children have not yet turned that corner. They still insist they are not tired, not ever. They stay awake as long as they can, and taking a nap is their worst nightmare. Take our flight to Las Vegas yesterday, for example. We left Cleveland at 6:30pm and arrived in Las Vegas at 9:15pm, which translated to midnight for our family. The children were so well behaved on the plane, but we could tell near the end that Andrew was starting to fade. He put all his books away and pulled out his sleeping buddies--Footprint the dog and his "nother one" (a crocheted granny square for those who are not familiar). This was a sure sign that he would soon be snoozing. He even curled up on my lap while the seatbelt sign was off.

The girls were keeping themselves busy with books and games across the aisle, so Andrew, Glenn, and I coiled ourselves up in a complicated knot that could surely lead only to pinched nerves and aching backs. And I watched as my active, energetic, sometimes attentionally deficit little boy turned into a sleeping angel. His eyes stayed open for a while, wheels still turning in his head. I watched for that first blink that lasted a millisecond longer than usual. Then I saw another...and another, until finally, he allowed himself to be taken away to dreamland.

I looked over at Brooke, and was surprised to see some major head bobbing. Earlier she had asked if it was 9:00 in Cleveland so that she could go to sleep, but she had held out for quite a while. It looked so uncomfortable that I suggested she use her backpack as a pillow of sorts, but it was "too hard." I chuckled as I thought about how that will not matter in 10 years or so. If she can rest her head on a cement block to catch up on sleep, she will. For now, though, she gets mad because the seat back does not recline as much as she thinks is should. She has not slept without a comfortable pillow under her head in years. But she did admit to me this morning that she was tired and was going to try to sleep in the car on the way up to Utah. Has she reached a milestone? Has she come to terms with and accepted the need for sleep in her life? Is she no longer afraid to miss whatever it is kids think they are missing while they sleep?

Whatever the case may be, whatever position my kids are on the sleep-accceptance spectrum, I can think of few things that are more satisfying than watching a child drift off. From the solid weight of a sleeping newborn on your chest to a wild toddler breathing softly through his mouth, to my kids dozing on the airplane, a sleeping child is a heavenly child.

I just wish it had happened sooner than right before the initial descent into Las Vegas.