The older I get, the more difficult it is to sleep in on weekends. I can understand that when you’re really young, the world is a new and astonishing place and you’re little neurons, and dendrites cry out to be developed and elongated (or whatever neurons and dendrites do when they’re being used). As babies, we stood in our cribs and shook the sides with impatience calling out to whatever parental unit will come and release us from the confines of our bumper-padded cell.
So that we can crawl and smell and touch and taste every and any new thing.
Then we get older. And the world calls out for us to use it as our canvas or our stage. And there doesn’t seem like enough daylight hours to build the best fort ever built, or paint enough empty milk cartons with mud (or our own bodies for that matter) and a stick that serves as a painter’s brush.
And we live as though our life was made up a thousand summers to be lived and tweaked and lived again.
Then we get even older, and there doesn’t seem like we can sleep in long enough. No amount can be stockpiled high enough to give us the energy to get out from beneath the covers and bounce into the day unrestrained and unfettered by insecurities and boredom. We want it dark and quiet and tomb-like. A room that is a refuge. We are made hostile by the sound of the vacuum or the clanking of pots and pans and therefore strike out with venomous words to the unsuspecting parent whose task it is to probe and prod the mass of blankets and quilts to see what, or if life exists underneath.
To sleep perchance to dream, of boys and clothes and songs. Imaginings far more enchanting than the teenage existence that exists.
As an adult, I wrestle with feelings of guilt. What won’t be accomplished throughout the day if I stay for long in a state of inertia. It is guilt and anxiety that serve as motivating forces that compel then propel me up and out of bed. I wish for a big giant hand to pin me down. Nothing quite so heavy as to suffocate me or contribute to claustrophobia, but exerting just enough pressure to serve as an excuse not to leave the confines of my quilts. “Well I WOULD get up, but this giant hand is keeping me here. Guess I’ll just have to stay cocooned in my covers…now if I could just reach the novel I” m reading.” But I feel as though I’m running out of time. I have things to do, places to go, and people to see. It no longer feels as though there are endless summers before me.
This Saturday I’m going to try to stay in bed AT LEAST until 8:00 am. I’ll let you know how it goes.