Memoirs and sleep debts, etc.
Monday, June 14, 2021
I pick up a bag of kale in the fridge to check the sell-by date, it said June 9. I couldn’t remember if we were ahead of that date or behind. I genuinely asked myself if we were still in May? June 9th feels surreal, not possible, yet it was 5 days ago.
I napped from 3-5:30 today and here we are, 10:26 pm, and I’m still tired. Will I ever not be tired? I do wonder if I am still playing catch up from the lack of sleep of my 20’s, not due to partying, but due to babying. Is sleep debt a real thing?
Why am I so scared to write? It’s almost like dread. I dream about it all day while I skin mangos and chop pineapples, but then when the opportunity presents itself, I get cold feet real fast. This evening, after I had done the dishes (this is something I am very good at,) I laid down on the rug in front of the fireplace where we have three huge, soft pillows. I brought a book, Stray by Stephanie Danler (because if I’m not going to man up and write I can at least pretend to be a writer by reading,) and a pen, underlining things like: “We often text each other at the same instant. This won’t happen now, because he’s with his wife, but I can’t stop touching my phone anyway.” (p 16) Or: “In her late eighties she still had a drawer full of lingerie.” (p 49) It’s a memoir and I typically devour memoirs whole. So far, this one does not give any hints of being any different. I become obsessed with the author and spend time browsing her Instagram page, trying to figure out how to become a real writer.
The last memoir I read is called Finding Freedom by Erin French. It is so, so good. A book that left me a bit wrecked. Also an author I casually stalked on social media. On the back cover of that book was a blurb by Stephanie Danler, which prompted me to pick up Stray. I have a feeling I will be left flattened by this one, too.
As I’m reading, my youngest daughter sidles up to me with a blanket and her teddy bear--a raggedy, patched up brown stuffed animal with lots of stains and loose threads that has lived with us since she was born, and whom we endearingly and lazily have named Brown Bear--and I start to notice her movements slowing, her breath too. She is falling asleep. It’s around 8:30 and still fully bright outside--the summer solstice is nearly upon us--but the weekend full of unforgiving heat and endless soccer has done her in. I gingerly turn my pages, though there is no need. Eventually I ready her room for sleep, and carry her upstairs. I put her older brother to bed too, who, surprisingly, doesn’t fight me. Maybe he finally has conceded his exhaustion, too.
I’m downstairs, nothing to do and everything to do, and I don’t know what to do. So I browse Instagram. Check my email. Check the fucking weather.
