Off the Grid: Middle-age antics threaten sleep schedules

Of all my husband’s talents, perhaps that of the most value is his uncanny ability to fall asleep literally anywhere and on demand, as if narcolepsy was a hobby. He is the envy of insomniac menopausal women, new parents and the nap-adverse.

Places my husband might be found sleeping: the cab of his truck, the kitchen floor, the living room floor, the trampoline, any chair, a movie theatre or during any film of any genre, with a book or a phone in his hand, in either of the kids’ beds. He may be prostrate in a pillow, breathing through gills hidden in his beard or something, or midconversation.

There may be a correlation between the depth of my description of a new sweater and his sleep, but the data is incomplete. It does not matter what time of day it is, how bright the sun shines, or if we’re going to bed in an hour (we call these naps “presleep”).

I believe, in a past life, he lived in a place prone to air raids or the frequent sound of screeching pterodactyls; for no threat, noise, mayhem, cacophony of teenagers, or police helicopter strobes can keep Charlie from sleep. Nothing can. Except my reading lamp.

After a long day of intermittent napping or, as often is the case, just hopes of intermittent napping and the salacious nature of our pillow talk (during which we talk literally about how much we cannot wait to get to our pillows), we find ourselves collapsing into our gluttonous queen-size bed. For a long time, I had a dreamy little full-size bed, metal-framed headboard and footboard, built in an era where humans were 5-foot-8 or shorter. Charlie had to sleep diagonal, but unwilling to give up any real estate for my new lover, I made him hang the lower half of his legs off the bed. Even then, he slept just fine, so long as I didn’t have my lamp on.

I did not acquiesce to a larger bed until I noticed Charlie was remaining in a partial fetal position until about noon each day. Also, a larger bed would promise space for more pillows. As most people know, one can never have enough pillows, and we Scandinavians are particularly fond of reindeer skins, paid maternity leave, Aquavit and pillows, in that order.

For a while, I tried going to bed earlier to get in all the reading my heart required and being ready to turn the light off should my husband join me. This is what middle-aged marriage is about: synchronizing our circadian rhythms and snuggling long enough to get warm but not so long as to induce a hot flash.

If I go to bed before Charlie, or worse, fall asleep before Charlie, he inevitably has some sort of errand-in-the-darkness to struggle his way through when he comes to bed. The dogs need to sort themselves, and being dogs, they are excited about the prospect of going to bed and fuss about here and there while he tells them to stop fussing and just go to bed. Then a nose needs to be blown and a toe is stubbed while a robe is hung. Dramatic grumbling follows.

For a while, he had a sort of Olympic dive entrance or a WWE wrestling move that got him from a standing position to a laying position, followed by some kind of forcible pillow mincing. Then there was the phase of the plantar fasciitis booties (the only thing sexier than wearing a CPAP machine to sleep) and the adjustment of the industrial Velcro. The noise jerked me out of my sleep with a heart rate not recommended by cardiologists and a belief that a badger was at the bedside demanding vengeance.

Tired of being roused from my own slumber, I gave up trying to get my pages in by the time he was in bed and assumed his sensitivity to light and turning pages had diminished.

Last week, I was buried in the enthralling battle of the bunnies of “Watership Down” and whatever combination of life was keeping me awake, Charlie came to bed with that dejected look of, “Oh, you’re still reading?”

We had one of those silent conversations known to married couples. He glanced at the light and my book, no doubt assessing how many pages were left. Then he ever-so-delicately slipped below the sheets in a kind of demonstrative truce of bedtime etiquette. I ignored him because a rabbit general had just bitten half the ear off another. Charlie, who had been waxing poetic for hours about bed time (and tested its promise on the living room rug earlier), laid there blinking at the ceiling as if he’d just slugged an espresso.

In an act of true love, I got out my little book light, the kind that slips onto the cover and just lights the pages, and turned off my reading lamp. I guess we don’t always have to understand each other’s idiosyncrasies. We just need to accept them. Charlie was asleep before I turned the page.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammimarie@gmail.com.