A Spot in the Sun (2010)
In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying the darkness and we know no death. —Tom Wolfe
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]I’m sitting here this morning wondering if I can survive writing about sleeping. I’m too close to having just awakened to feel very objective about the subject. I like sleep far too much, get far too little of it, and rarely anymore do I risk doing it naked. This is where being an adult and pretending to be responsible really becomes a drain on one’s spirit. I would have much rather stayed in bed this morning. Kat is still there, sleeping soundly, and the cats are still snuggled at her feet. The bed is inviting. Why the hell am I up typing at this hour? Oh yeah, this is the only time I have for things like this. Life, you know.
Do a quick search on sleeping naked and you’ll inevitably find all kinds of advice columns about the health benefits of tossing your pajamas to the side before you slip under the covers. Some of those articles even invoke science and medicine, which makes me sad that I wasn’t invited to be part of those studies. I would happily volunteer for someone to pay me to sleep. I wouldn’t even charge that much; maybe ten dollars so I could buy a decent breakfast when I woke up. Such is the story of my life, though. No one ever invites me to participate in the really fun experiments.
Sleeping naked is something into which one gradually becomes comfortable. I don’t think anyone can make the claim that it’s natural. Even babies liked to be diapered and swaddled tightly. Sleeping naked requires the right combination of comfortable accommodations and safe environment. The room temperature has to be just right. The sheets have to be clean and soft. Any companion not only has to also be naked, but they have to be totally non-judgmental; not merely about your body, but about your sleeping style as well. This sleeping naked thing gets complicated.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Sleeping naked comes with some challenges, as well. The last thing anyone wants to do is wake up to an embarrassing situation. Risks have to be eliminated as much as possible. No going to bed with candles still burning. Make sure you’re not sleeping next door to a meth lab that’s about to be raided. Don’t sleep naked during a tornado watch. When sleeping naked, we must realize that we are not going to wake up looking as sexy as when we went to bed, not even close. We don’t need strangers seeing us in such a disheveled state, especially if those strangers might be attractive.
Then, there’s the matter of children. There’s no sleeping naked when there are children in the house who are old enough to come wandering in to talk to mommy in the middle of the night, and it’s always mommy they want. The sounds daddies make when they sleep are frightening to small children, so they always choose the quieter parent; the one they mistakenly assume to be more sympathetic and comforting. Having absolutely no concept of spatial boundaries, children will attempt to crawl right into the bed with you and when you are sleeping naked things immediately become awkward, if not downright embarrassing.
Sure, sleeping naked is wonderful, good for your health and good for relationships, but it sure is a lot of trouble as well. By the time one has mitigated the risk factors, changed the sheets, put out the candles, locked the doors, changed the batteries in the smoke detectors, and duct taped the children to their beds, you might just be too exhausted to care. And there’s no rest for the wicked, so I’ve heard, so I might as well make another pot of coffee.[/one_half_last]
Dust On The Trail
Dust On The Trail. Model: Lisa Petrini
A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity. ― George Bernard Shaw
[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Death can be a difficult issue to discuss with children, especially when it comes to family members. One moment, you think they have a grasp of it, then later, seemingly out of the blue, the topic comes up again with new questions that need to be answered. With a five- and a six-year-old around the house, the subject comes up surprisingly often, sometimes in ways we weren’t expecting. Trying to figure out how best to respond to those questions and situations is a mixture of wiping tears and trying to not laugh at the wrong time.
We were driving past a mortuary and its large cemetery one afternoon when Baby Girl pipes up and informs us that this was where her pre-K teacher, Miss ‘Nay, works. When questioned as to why her teacher would work at a cemetery, the little darling responded without hesitation, “That’s where she puts the people she doesn’t like.”
Miss “Nay was horrified to hear of the exchange. She’s a jolly, pleasant woman who does a great job with children, but might be a bit superstitious. “I can’t stand dead people,” she told us. “I don’t even go to funerals.”
More frequently, and certainly with less humor, it is Little Man who raises the subject, frequently in tears over the loss of his great-grandmother a couple of years ago. Trying to explain to him that people don’t live forever and that his great-grandmother had lived a long life does little to appease him. She’s not here now, and that’s what counts. At other times, though, he can look out across a cemetery and explain that once one has expired that, rather than becoming dust, our bodies become tree seeds that grow new forests. While perhaps missing a biological step or four, that perspective of a renewable life is certainly less traumatic and easier to discuss.[/one_half]
[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]Growing up in rural Oklahoma, and especially the son of a minister, death was such a normal part of life for us that we were almost callous about it. After all, we played and ran in large fields where it wasn’t unusual to come across whole sun-bleached skeletons of cows. The general opinion of ranchers at the time was to only remove a cow carcass if it was diseased and posed a health risk to the herd. Coming across skulls in the dust just wasn’t that uncommon.
Western philosophies have evolved over the past couple of generations where we no longer see death’s natural role in the life cycle. Instead, we see that passing from life to dust as the ultimate unfairness, the unjust removal of someone important to our lives. We expect explanations where there are none to be had and look to blame people who are not genuinely at fault. In matters of violence that should never have happened, our sense of outrage stems from our own sense of privilege that the deceased should never have been taken from us; a warped sense that it is we, more than the dead person, who have been short-changed.
Today is the thirteenth anniversary of my mother’s sudden and very unexpected death, a mere six months and four days after my father’s passing. I was living in Atlanta and one of the challenging decisions we had to make was whether the boys should go to their Mema’s funeral. To do so would mean them missing the first two days of school, but to not take them would deny them the emotional closure we thought they might need. We left the decision up to them. They opted to not go. As one of them put it, “We’ve been to enough funerals this year.”
Life is a wonderful thing, but sooner or later we all become dust on the trail. Love now. Live now. Find peace. Embrace the full cycle of life, even when it seems unfair.[/one_half_last]
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