The plan for our first day of vacation was to drop V off at day care, luxuriate in the quiet for a few hours, have lunch and see a movie. We got through most of that plan, but after lunch, Odie and I looked at each other and almost simultaneously said, “Nap?” So, instead of a visit to the cinema, we visited The Sandman. For THREE GLORIOUS HOURS. I doubt any movie could possibly be that satisfying.
Sometimes, when V is rolling around on the bed, sticking her tongue out at me playfully, and kicking her feet instead of drifting off to sleep, I tell her, “One day, my dear, you will look back on this in a way that you cannot grasp now and ask yourself, ‘Why didn’t I sleep when I had the chance???’ Because as you grow older, you find that sleep is a precious thing that we lose a little bit more of year by year.” I don’t really say that. It’s more like, “PLEASE, for the love of all that is holy, GO TO SLEEP!” If you don’t believe that sleep is a most precious natural resource, watch TV for an afternoon. The number of commercials for mattresses, pills, and exercise gadgets all aimed at improving your sleep is astonishing. Ambien is among the most commonly abused prescription drugs, according to my completely unscientific research, and I don’t think it’s just for the sleep-eating or the sleep-driving. People want sleep! They are sleep deprived and they’ll do almost anything to get it!
Young people, in all of their youthful ignorance, fight sleep. My students are notoriously underslept. With the advanced students, it’s mostly because they procrastinate their schoolwork and stay up until three a.m. doing it, or they have so MUCH work that it takes them from three p.m. to three a.m. to get it all done. And why not? They can always sleep in class (and they most assuredly do). With my, er, um, NON-AP students (aka “the regulars”), they don’t sleep at night because nobody makes them. They certainly aren’t up doing homework. Some of them sleep so deeply in class that even a vigorous shaking of the desk or an insistent tapping of a pencil near the eardrum will not even slightly rouse them. In a way, they are like toddlers. They go and go and go until they just pass out where they sit.
On mornings when I have been up most of the night with a restless or sick baby, out of bed since four or five, and yet still at work on time with my lessons planned and a fake smile pinned firmly to my face, and I look out to see four or ten heads flat on desks, I admit I feel just a teeny bit furious. They think they will miss all of the fun if they go to sleep. That life will somehow rush by them between ten at night and six in the morning and they will have irretrievably MISSED IT ALL! Little do they know, it’s SLEEP that is passing them by. And oh, how they’ll miss it someday.
I sure do. When you’re pregnant with your first child, people who already have kids get this wicked gleam in their eyes and tell you, “Sleep while you can, because once the baby comes, that’s over.” I try really hard not to do this to new parents-to-be. There’s something about that devilish curl of the lip that says, “Soon, you too will know joylessness like I know joylessness, and somehow, the knowledge of YOUR suffering pleases me.” They don’t need me to begrudge them their wide-eyed innocence. They’ll find out soon enough how sleepless parenthood is, and I don’t think they’ll say, “Why didn’t anyone warn us about this in a totally condescending way?!”
Because there will also be three-hour naps, for the lucky among us. And God (or maybe Starbucks?) made coffee, too. And children, who despite their sleep thievery make the groggy days of our lives worth staying awake for.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Self-serving philosophies
This week’s episode of “Parenthood” included a storyline where one couple was faced with telling their six-year-old about death. The mother wanted to soften the blow by telling their daughter about heaven, but daddy was adamantly against it. When they tried to explain to the wee child that death is the end, that’s it, she became understandably upset. In a panic, mommy spontaneously told her about heaven, much to daddy’s tight-jawed dismay.
I brought the scene up with Odie over dinner tonight. I told him I understood why people told children about heaven. It really softens the “when you die, that’s it. Poof. Lights out” blow. Odie became tight-jawed and frowny, like the TV dad. He said he didn’t want to get in the habit of lying to our daughter. “But it isn’t a lie,” I retorted, “it’s what most people believe.” He agreed, but countered that he would need to choose his words very carefully when he talked about this subject with V.
And it suddenly became clear to me why people tend to marry within their own religions and belief systems. Sure, the irreverent atheist may be sexy and mysteriously appealing, but when it comes time to reproduce, he’s going to end up telling your innocent little baby that there IS NO GOD! That it’s a lie people tell to comfort themselves. A self-serving philosophy.
Which got me thinking about philosophies. Aren’t they ALL self-serving? Isn’t their purpose to bring us comfort and strength in the face of truly awful circumstances? “God has a plan” can be so much easier to swallow than “Random, horrible, unfair shit happens to everybody, but mostly only good people, every single day.” If you believe that when you die, you go to some wonderful place and are reunited with your family and friends (and former pets of course, because it isn’t “heaven” without dogs), then how is that hurting anybody? If it makes you feel better, then I say believe it.
“But you are deceiving yourself,” might be the argument. One time, someone said to me, “You seem like such an intelligent woman. I’m surprised to find out you have such folksy beliefs.” Don’t you just hate those back-handed insults? It sounds like a compliment up front, but there’s soft center of condescension when you bite into it.
Atheism is as much of a self-serving philosophy as the belief that there is something after death. I’m not going to make a blanket statement about all atheists (or “Secular Humanists”), but I will say that some of the ones I have known have been an awful self-congratulatory “I’m so much smarter than you, peasant” lot. Because they think they are right, and that most people are delusional idiots. And it feels good to be right in a world full of delusional idiots. Trust me.
I agree with Odie that my daughter and our other child should be free to choose their own beliefs. I’m not sure I even believe in “heaven,” but I understand why someone would tell a child that, especially when a beloved pet has shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to its reward. But I worry how this opens the door for someone to tell them about hell, which I absolutely do NOT believe in. And in my opinion, the heaven/hell story is too often used to manipulate and control people. I recently read a book about a particular cult, and before I read the book, I wondered how so many people could be made to obey a crazy lunatic, even giving their pubescent daughters to him for “marriage” (read: rape). These faithful believed to the core of their being that the only way to this perfect heaven they’d heard about since childhood was through this man’s grace. And to cross him, defy him, refuse to sleep with him or give your child to him for sexual gratification, means you and everyone you love would burn in hell for all of eternity. This fear of hell is a powerful tool. Easy to abuse. Terrifying to children.
Now, I’m not saying that my children’s only choices are atheism or blind allegiance to cult leaders. There is a whole world in-between, where most of us live quite happily with our individual self-serving philosophies. I remember becoming hysterical with tears when I realized around age six that my poodle was going to die someday. I was in my bed, sobbing, and my mother called the dog in, who ran around the room and jumped on and off of my bed like a spastic Tasmanian Devil, demonstrating how clearly full of life she was. Mom assured me that Daisy wouldn’t die for a long, long time. “Just look at her!” she exclaimed, as Daisy’s antics underscored her comforting words. She was right, Daisy didn’t die for over ten more years. When she finally did go, it was my mother who took it harder than I. “Don’t worry, Mom,” I assured her. “Daisy is in a better place. We’ll see her again someday.”
It’s more than just death that we need our self-serving philosophies to get through. Sometimes, I just have to believe that things happen for a reason. That someone smarter than me, or at least with a better view of The Big Picture, is driving this bus, and it isn’t going to go careening over a cliff. When I get uncertain news from doctors, like I recently did, I need to have something to lean on other than, “Eh. Shit happens.” When I stand on a precipice, peering into the unknown, I have chosen to believe that I’m not alone there. Not necessarily that God has a plan or that EVERYTHING happens for a reason, but that there is goodness and opportunity and joy in something that seems like only darkness and fear.
And yes, I’m going to be that cryptic, self-serving though it may be.
Share this: