Child of the Night

In my earliest childhood memories, beginning at the age of three in Canton, Ohio, I was a child of the night. At first it was fear. I knew I would have terrifying nightmares. When I begged my mother to leave on the light at bedtime, she not only refused, but she told me a rooster would fly in through the window and sit on my lip if I cried from being afraid, and then she told me demons under the bed would grab me if I got up. So I spent some years waiting up all night, ready to fight off the rooster. The "If I die before I wake" part of the nightly childhood prayer I had to recite at bedtime didn't encourage sleep, either. I reasoned that it meant I would die in my sleep; therefore, if I didn't sleep, I wouldn't die.

Nightmares have plagued me throughout my life. Sleeping at night meant that I would awake in silent darkness in the middle of a dream and have problems getting out of the dream. Staying awake through the night and sleeping during the day makes it easier to reorient myself after a nightmare. I've managed to nearly stop one recurring type, which I'll write about in another blog post.

In elementary school years in Ohio, Alabama, and Tennessee, I discovered my parents' nightly conversations after their lights were out. It was more fun to listen to them than to sleep. By the time I was 11 years old, I figured out that there was a world of literature waiting for me that would satisfy my hunger for a world of fantasy and sexual adventures. Nights were filled with reading every adult book I could buy in a store or check out from the library, by flashlight under the covers.

I'll never forget the morning my mother discovered Peyton Place (in paperback), Marjorie Morningstar, and Lady Chatterley's Lover (both in hardcover from the library) under my mattress. "Bill!" she shrieked to my father, carrying them out of the bedroom in a stack away from her body as if they were crocodiles. He was still in their bedroom, so It must have been a weekend morning. "Look what your daughter is reading! What do we do?" This was her eardrum-piercing siren voice. He said something so quietly, I couldn't hear it,  this man who had long ago awakened in me an awareness of everything unspeakable that dwelled underneath layers of clothes and went on behind closed doors. I was mortified at being caught in my choice of reading material, the way a guy must feel when his mother catches him in a sex act. In a few minutes, Mother returned to my room and handed the books to me. I don't remember what she said, if anything. From then on, I didn't have to hide what I was reading, but all night, under the covers--that still had to be with a flashlight I could click off the minute I heard her coming down the hall.

Children of the night do not do well in school or in life in general! In the classroom, I couldn't stay awake or pay attention. In junior high school in Delaware, teachers threw chalk and erasers at me that bounced off my head and made everyone laugh. My surly attitude caused me to spend many hours after school in detention halls, balancing on the back two legs of my chair, defiantly chewing gum and glaring at the teacher.

Life in the college dormitory in Kentucky was no easier, with a housemother whose apartment was on the first floor, underneath the stairway next to my second-floor room. We had rules--no showers or washing hair or partying in rooms after 10 p.m. The housemother knew my footsteps on the stairs as I crept down to disobey every night rule. She must not have slept much at night, either, because she chased me down the hallways to send me back to my room. It's a good thing I had some intelligence when it came to learning, because although I seldom made it to my morning classes in college, I still managed to squeak by with passing grades.

I spent the best years of my life on the road with my band and as a night club entertainer. Going to work at 7 or 8 p.m. and getting off at 1 or 2 a.m. was the perfect life for a night person. After work we ate "breakfast" in the all-night restaurant and came back to the motel room to sleep. No alarm clock woke me in the morning, but we did have to battle motel maids who couldn't read "LEAVE US ALONE!" signs. In general, my husband Whitey and I could sleep through the morning, take a nap in the late afternoon, and be wonderfully rested for a night of music and fun.

Except for those years on the road, lack of sleep hasn't served me well as an adult. Unfortunately for us night people, the world operates during the day, and those of us who can't or don't sleep at night struggle during the day to function and to escaping ridicule and scorn for nodding off in unpredictable moments. Staying awake after lunch is impossible for me. By mid-afternoon, it feels like I've been hit with an elephant dart. I pass out anywhere I happen to be. Here are some of the places I try to avoid, because I know I will fall asleep if I'm not playing music or facilitating a group of my own:

Church services in mainstream churches
Corporate meetings
Weddings
Funerals
Meetings for any reason

Sleep deprivation can result in a surly disposition, hallucinations, manic episodes, and an irrational approach to life. I believe (but I could be very mistaken!) that I've become more adept at suppressing such outward behaviors as I continue to be a child of the night. I would love to awake after a good night's sleep, feeling rested and refreshed for a day of high achievement--like in the TV commercials for sleep medications--but now so many different problems awake me throughout the night, there's no magic pill to address them all: night sweats, nightmares, restless leg syndrome (diagnosed in a sleep lab), asthma, pain in my joints, and limbs that go numb.

If I could really have my way, I wouldn't have any need to sleep! Then I'd have more time in my life to do what makes me happy: complain!