Morning becomes her
Tell me: Is there anything more gloriously sensual than lying between body-warmed flannel sheets on a chilly winter morning watching the dawn slowly light up the room? I think not.As much as I love nestling into bed at night and reading a book until my lids grow heavy, I love this slow awakening more. I have long awakened without the aid of an alarm, both a blessing and a curse. When I must be somewhere early, it is a blessing not to be jarred awake by whatever tone—however dulcet—I’ve chosen for my iPhone alarm. My slumbering husband appreciates this too. But at 5:45 am, in the dead of winter, when I don’t need to be anywhere until 9, this early rising can be a curse…unless I recast these unhours as an opportunity to drift and self-snuggle, to wander in and out of light dreams. And, oh yeah, to make to-do lists. That last one would not seem relaxing. But I am a list-lover, and lists calm me.I was not always such a happy sleeper. Years ago, as an extra-added-attraction to my (undiagnosed) post-partum depression, I suffered persistent insomnia. Well, it would have been persistent had I not been prescribed, re-prescribed and re-re-prescribed Ambien. Taking Ambien was like flipping a light switch. One moment I was tense, hyper-alert, staring at the ceiling; the next, peacefully asleep until morning. I loved that little blue pill. I loved it every night. I loved it even when I hated it.I didn’t fall asleep without it for more than a year. Over the course of that year I slowly slowly reduced my dosage, first shaving off a little sliver of the pill, then a little more. Then I was down to half a pill. Then a quarter. Finally, toward the end, I could barely see the spec of pill I was taking. It was, as my husband rightly pointed out, a “sub-sub-clinical dose.” It was not doing me any pharmacological good. But if I had managed to break my biochemical addiction, I was still addicted to the act of taking the pill.I don’t know if it was that experience that made me the happy early riser I became. But I do know that many mornings, opening my eyes in the dark, my first thought is: I fell asleep last night. I slept.