Drink to Sleep
I couldn’t sleep last night and kept thinking how my mom dreamed once that she was on the 50-yard line going eyeball to eyeball with the Princes of the Church. (Freud called, I know: Maybe Mom dreamed that because she got divorced way WAY back when it was like worse than sacrificing small animals, and yet she continued to take Communion which was grounds for a few more times around the ol’ rotisserie-spit in Hell but hey I don’t blame her. Her husband left her so now she has to just sit in the pew like I was always doing because I'd made out with my boyfriend for more than five minutes and was in a state of Mortal Sin?)
I envied her that dream last night just because she was dreaming! Everyone was dreaming last night, people’s pets, their houseplants, poor George Bush on House arrest for another 100 days or so…..
My man, who CLAIMS he never dreams, was at least snoring to beat the band and even sort of smiling - which made me want to shave his chest hair off – dry - and harvest those eyebrows too, just out of envy, because I lay there NOT sleeping hour after hour after hour....
I hung my head upside down off the bed which usually makes me have religious visions and then pass out. No dice. I though about that fox-faced Eckhart Tolle who says we are not our minds and we should turn the darn things off but I couldn’t. So finally at 2am I, who am trying to diet here, got up and poured me some hot milk. Then I added cream, then cocoa, then a fat slug of whiskey, then sugar, then whipped cream and drank it down grimly. I thought maybe the alcohol would help but it didn’t, of course it didn’t. I always forget that alcohol keeps the body working especially that giant gelatinous thing under your right ribs known as THE LIVER, which thank God we have one, y' know? I used to eat cigarette ashes just to get the laugh and I suppose they’re still in my liver somewhere, along with the booze-soaked Belgian waffle-ful of calories in that creamy drink.
Anyway. I lay awake til 4:30, at which point I suddenly fell asleep and dreamed that the ceilings were all dripping rain and a young person I just met was here and my kids too and my kids were kids again and they were all busy talking with the new one and I thought “Ah, my dear children living under this roof again, leaky or not.... “ - and then the alarm went off at and it was 5 and so I got up.
It’s raining still and I’m like 100,000 calories further away from thin but I was able to work and write and water the plants just now. And the ceilings AREN’T leaking after all and David seems to still have chest hair and I sure do miss Mom who lies in her grave these 20 years in her favorite little suit and I will never ever be sorry I took a picture of her in her casket even if the funeral directors did all scowl at me as I snapped it.
So here’s a shot of death, if you even believe in it. Me I don’t. I see Mom all the time out of the corner of my eye and I hear her voice, which was strong and full of fun. My idol Emily Dickinson wrote it to a friend: "There ARE no dead, Katy. The grave is but our moan for them." So there.
