Midnight Rainbows

by Pat Antonopoulos

Insomnia plagues some of our family members. Bouts of sustained sleeplessness come and go with no discernible pattern. Deeply asleep for the earliest part of the night and then suddenly wide awake with no hope of more restorative hours. Attitude suffers right along with energy levels that drop steadily. How I dreaded the first sign that the cycle was beginning.

One of my sons decided it was because there were periods when we could not switch off our minds. Darting from one thing to another, the mind would not quiet enough to allow sleep. So...I tried boring my mind into giving way. Not exactly counting sheep, but all sort of convoluted math activities designed to force sleep out of frustration. End result was I did get faster at subtracting multiple numbers from 999---over and over and over. Tiny benefit for prolonged effort.

A simple solution might have been and OTC sleep aid, but I tend to research every thing I swallow and usually decide that the side effects sound worse than the current problem.

My new plan is discovering midnight rainbows.
My life is blessed with amazing people and the memories surrounding each of them.
When insomnia gives me extra hours, those hours become a concentrated effort to focus on important moments of our lives.

Maybe the key words are 'concentrated effort', because it certainly isn't an activity to turn off the mind. Frustration begs for sleep.
Morning grogginess continues to need extra caffeine. Being alone for a long morning walk takes the grouchiness out the door and away from affecting others.

Those midnight rainbows absolutely do not sparkle, but they are adding some comforting memories to those sustained sleepless hours. And the recall is forcing me to focus on the amazing people in my life, children, grandchildren, siblings, friends,former students and their families.

My grandmother had a saying cobbled and convoluted from her sense of life: "Don't waste your time trying to make a silk purse from that sow's ear." Always makes me smile...and I sometimes do wonder if Grandma had it right.

In the meantime, insomnia has an adversary, midnight rainbows, and rainbows always elicit a sigh of appreciation.