AND MAKE SURE YOU GET PLENTY OF REST!. “WAKE UP!.........C’mon love, it’s a quarter past five”. “Mmmmmmmmm..zzzzzz” “C’mon. If you don’t get up I won’t have time for a coffee before I go……..up you get NOW! You waste a third of your life sleeping!” By the time I’ve produced the coffee, made the sandwiches, brought the towels, laid out the clothing, tied his shoelaces, packed his briefcase, been to the toilet and thrown cold water over my head, I’m sufficiently awake to think up a smart retort: “But sweetheart, if you don’t get enough sleep, how can you possibly enjoy the other two thirds of your life!” Oops….too late; he’s already left to dice with death on the freeway. And it’s invariably also too late to sneak back to bed. Yesterday’s mess, kids’ breakfasts, packed lunches, TV, chaos and school beckon. Like myself, at least two of my kids are halfway sensible. They love their beds, particularly when it’s time to leave them! First to be roused is the early school starter. I brave the reek of last night’s socks and turn on his light. I begin with a gentle morning greeting which becomes shriller at regular intervals. When this fails I use threats. Removal of blanket followed by application of cold water is generally successful but due to recent increases in age, height, weight and disrespect, it can sometimes have unhappy repercussions. Number two child is ritualistic and thus comparatively easy. This operation is always accomplished smoothly if I previously prepare the couch, removing all accumulated cushions; papers and crumbs, then turn on the TV to “The Flintstones”. She rises instantly to my call and stumbles zombie-like towards the couch while I trail dutifully behind carrying 2 blankets, a pillow and a panda. The littlest dormouse, generally known as SHE, has to be prised like a limpet from the mattress then half carried, half dragged, into the lounge-room whereupon she falls instantly back to sleep in an armchair. She is not ritualistic, nor has she a better nature to which one can appeal. On one occasion I sent her big brother to entice her out of bed. After a great deal of shaking, a bleary eye emerged briefly from the bedding. “Go away Michael. You might wake me up. Once when my husband was away and it was necessary for me to motivate myself, I DIDN’T! In the consequent “Hurry, hurry, we’re going to be late for school” chaos that ensued, I mentioned that the alarm hadn’t gone off. “Yes it did mummy”, SHE chirruped, “it was making me wake up, so I went in your room and turned it off”. I love my sleep. Until I was married I would always manage to average around 9 hours of sleep a night, even if it meant sleeping in a lot at weekends to catch up. Marriage changed a lot of things. Saturdays became shopping day. Sunday was principally for sport. As our lives progressed, these were supplanted by other sleep robbers such as bush bashing, hunting, fishing, panning and fossicking. We even stood waist deep in icy surf in the dead of winter, casting out our surf rods at 2am. Sunrise in the Victorian Alps became a familiar sight. I recall one winter at Jericho when I was regularly urged from my cosy sleeping bag to make the compulsory ritual morning coffee. The fact that to accomplish this I first had to light the fire and then break the ice to collect the water seemed to bother nobody at all except myself. Without doubt the most ageing episodes of those early years were during his pirate radio period. It was the closest I ever came to martyrdom, getting up to go to work after a night spent sharing a double bed with a sociable pet cockatoo, a blue heeler who snored, two cats and a large Yaesu radio transceiver that talked ‘skip’ to Japan, the Falklands or Alaska at 3 o’clock in the morning. My EX husband still impatiently dismisses the medical literature about individual sleep requirements. He claims that we sleep our lives away. He claims that many famous people, such as Napoleon, needed only a few hours sleep a night. No doubt other such examples also include Hitler, Herod, Stalin and Genghis Khan! When I had my third child the doctor asked me if I was ready to go home. I fell to my knees and begged to be allowed to stay in the hospital; preferably for the rest of my life! He allowed me one more day. While the nurses forcibly unhooked my clutching fingers from the metal bed-frame, his parting advice was: “And make sure you get plenty of rest”………………….
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 00:36:58 +0000
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