Ode to Sleeplessness

In the last month, for one reason or another (teething, the changing cycle of the moon, our myriad of house guests) our daughter has stopped sleeping through the night. Although she is now eighteen months old, she has reverted back to those early days of waking every three to four hours and nothing but rocking seems to console her. (Hence my lack of blog entries for the last month.)

Round about the seventeenth time I re-enter her room, sometime past two o'clock in the morning when the pain of sleeplessness has become a throbbing ache behind my eyes and I stumble desperate and disoriented down the hall, pluck her out of the crib and plunk down into the rocking chair, two thoughts persistently strike me:

1.That the delicate features of her face snuggled into my side still fill me with an overwhelming sense of awe and love regardless of what time it is.

2.How much bloody work it takes to raise a human.

Because we are still fighting two wars and the terror level consistently waffles between orange and yellow; because more often than not it seems someone I know won't make it to wrestle the demon of sleeplessness in their own child, it is the second thought that plagues me, jarring me awake along side my daughter.

I can't get over the idea that some parent somewhere spent all these countless evenings, pacing the small space of a room for miles, wearing out the joints of a rocking chair, singing about a mocking bird until they wished the mocking bird's damn voice box would fall out, praying for a gift as simple as sleep, only to have that life cut short by a bullet, a bomb, someone else's bad choices.

I'm not supposed to say this. I am supposed to say that its complicated. I am supposed to say that there is a logical explanation for where we are in history. I am supposed to say that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I am supposed to say that things are getting better and not worse. I am supposed to say whatever it is we've all been saying to help us sleep at night.

Only on this particular night, I can only think of a bib my daughter has already outgrown. It is hot pink and reads simply: War bad. And right now, with her body warm beside me, her chest finally rising and falling slowly enough that I know sleep will soon overtake her, it is the only thought that makes any sense.