From restless sleeper to world-class napper

I was always a good talker and good eater. Family stories of my birth have me in the delivery room, clutching my placenta and belting out "Everything's Coming Up Roses" then demanding some lasagna. But I was never a good sleeper.

There are plenty of additional family stories about how hard everybody worked to persuade me that sleep was not only a good idea but necessary for the continuation of life — not only my own, but that of my parents and the other adults in the three-family Brooklyn house where we lived.

Sleepless, I kept everybody up. Those Ethel Merman lungs weren't just for singing. I cried at the very idea of being tucked in, going beddy-bye or getting put down for the night.

We had a dog who was put down; I knew what it meant. I wasn't going anywhere, especially to sleep. I was scared.

I never experienced night terrors but I know people who have, and I know even more people whose children have dealt with these. They must be their own kind of hell. My fears were more ordinary and yet they were profound: I was afraid of the dark, I was afraid of being isolated and I was afraid of hearing my parents argue.

My parents argued bitterly and often; they did not have an easy marriage. Living in that multifamily home with my father's loud and judgmental family didn't help my mother feel at home in her own small set of rooms.

Only after the children were put to bed and all the doors were closed could my mother and father speak without their conversations being overheard.

They fought in whispers. They spoke low when they didn't speak of love.

At first I pretended to be asleep so I could get up and listen by hiding near the door to figure out what they were saying. Kids are frightened by the unknown and one of the worst unknowns is wondering whether your parents are OK.

Without doing it consciously or deliberately, I came to associate going to sleep with my parents' fierce and vituperative whispers. I associated it with secrets and sorrow.

Then I stopped listening to their arguments and started interrupting them. I figured that the more times I asked for water, or invented a nightmare or manufactured a stomach ache, the less time they'd have to make each other unhappy. If I could keep them distracted, maybe I could make them happier.

And so they'd sit next to me and sing songs or tell stories and eventually they would lie beside me and fall asleep. They'd calm down and my job was done. Then I could finally relax into sleep myself.

I'm still not the best of all sleepers, but the process of falling asleep at night is less fraught than it once was.

What I've become is an expert napper. I could do it competitively.

I can nap in a car (car sleep is some of the best sleep — as long as you're not at the wheel), in a hotel lobby while waiting for a room, in a library (at college, some of my best REM moments took place at the Sanborn House library where couches and soft chairs beckoned from among the books in the most glorious acts of nap seduction) and yes, at the office, where 10 minutes with my head down in the middle of the afternoon (not while teaching) will revive me for the rest of the day.

I've heard that baby boomers should start thinking about sleep the way we once thought about sex: Get it as often as possible, for as long as possible, and wherever you can.

There are caveats, of course. Don't fall asleep while operating earth-moving equipment. Don't nap at a conference, especially during your own presentation. Don't nap while having sex, at least not without warning.

I'm grateful that sleep and I are better friends these days — and nights. Dreams let me sweep out the messy, closed rooms in my head and open doors to new landscapes.

And waking up, which I never take for granted, is terrific. Most days it seems like everything's coming up roses.

Gina Barreca
The Hartford Courant
(TNS)

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Gina Barreca is a columnist for The Hartford Courant.