There is no greater loneliness when everyone in the Eastern time zone halfway to the Pacific is sleeping, while I’m at my computer, listening to the quiet hum of the baby monitors, the occasional gurgle of the humidifier and dogs snoring at my feet. Facebook is a ghost town at 2 a.m., so human contact of any kind isn’t an option. I wrote for hours on end until …my bleary eyes were seeing double. I read a chapter how to tiptoe around men’s egos in “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus.” I planned a unit of lessons on converting the metric system to customary units of measure. I began to clean the house, but quickly thought the better of it.
The DVR flicked on to record the most recent episode of “Go Diego Go.” The mind works itself to the brink of overkill after hours, and for a long time I pondered what sort of child would be watching Diego in the middle of the night. It made me think of my own children, and I tried to imagine the kind of life they would have without Twinkies. I wondered if, once teenagers, they’d roll their eyes at me when I reminisced about Hostess cupcakes, the same way I did when my father went on and on about his phonograph and vinyl record collection. From there I thought of my own teenage years, the age of innocence, when the economy was still intact, child stars still had their futures ahead of them, and one could listen to Great White without thinking of a nightclub consumed by flames.
In the battle against insomnia, we try to quiet the nonsensical, over-analytical thoughts that roll like some box office bomb in our heads, exacerbating life’s little problems to tragedies of global proportions. And so in an effort to quell the cogs in my brain, I spread out my yoga mat and flicked on Soundscapes, a soothing collection of ethereal instrumental music designed for inducing one into a relaxed and meditative state. Such haunting melodies also make for the perfect background music for a murder scene, but to think about that would be counterproductive.
Typically, Soundscapes is accompanied by picturesque scenes of ocean waves lapping against shorelines, eagles gliding over mountain tops, or bison lapping water from trickling streams. But on this particular night, the scenery was entirely different. Soundscapes now runs advertisements instead.
“Protect yourself from auto repairs!” I read as I practiced my Proud Warrior and Downward Dog. “If you owe more than $10,000 in taxes, be connected with a tax resolution specialist!” “Get your hair back in as little as four weeks!” “Erase the dark circles under your eyes!” “Have you or a loved one been injured by contraceptives?”
At the end of it all, I crawled onto the couch and thought about Twinkies, my unbalanced checkbook, how I forgot to thaw out tomorrow’s chicken, the dark circles under my eyes, taxes, and hazardous contraceptives. I watched the clock until the first of three children crept downstairs, hungry for breakfast, morning chit-chat and the latest episode of “Go Diego Go.”
One of the sad and inevitable truths as you approach forty: pulling all-nighters isn’t nearly as fun as it used to be.