The stranger my sleep’s gotten and the more active I’ve become during it, the harder it is to trust my perceptions immediately upon waking. If I consider how often, even 12 years ago, my ex sighed “I’ve been right here, there wasn’t a noise!” when I was startled awake by loud sounds I was absolutely certain I’d heard, or phantom smells, it’s obvious the lines between sleep and reality have been blurred for a long time now. It’s doubtful this abated in subsequent years, Crankenstein simply slept through it and I was more oblivious as a result.
That’s why, around 5:30 this morning, when I was roused by what felt like a shaking bed and accompanying rumble, I wasn’t immediately sure it was real. I’d been asleep for less than two hours, after a long period of sighing into the darkness and fruitlessly trying to find a comfortable position for my neck, and knew that I’d been in the middle of a bustling dream with a large cast of characters that I couldn’t quite remember, other than John Corbett made a cameo appearance.* “Was that an earthquake?” I asked Crankenstein, unsure if she’d startled due to my startling or if we’d been jostled awake by the same thing.
She didn’t respond and it was too dark to see her face, so I asked “Did the room shake?” By then I think she was in ‘Niles’ mode because she bolted downstairs shortly thereafter, while I sleepily squinted at my tablet and checked the US Geological Survey site to see if an earthquake had registered nearby — if so, I’d need to check the gas meter in the basement. Finding nothing there or on a local community group, I quickly developed an alternate theory that would’ve been obvious from the start if I hadn’t been so tired: there’d just been another mini-avalanche, a result of warmer temperatures and early morning rain.
When I called the suggestion downstairs to Crankenstein, she rubbished it, saying the roof was clear. But that was only the case in the backyard; patches of icy snow remained on the more ornate parts of the front roof, which sunlight barely touches, as recently as yesterday afternoon. A glance out the window confirmed chunks of ice had just fallen, so I did my pre-levodopa shuffle downstairs (Crankenstein confirms it looks like this) and had ‘Niles’ peek outside to see there was no danger. Right around then, there was a distant rumble but no rattling, and Crankenstein identified the noise as coming from next door, so our neighbors had a similar wakeup call.
Her heart rate returning to normal, Crankenstein checked the clock and asked if I’d mind relieving her of Muriel duties so she could return to bed.** In that moment, I wanted to bop her over the head with a pugil stick, American Gladiators style, and ask “How are you still comfortable hoarding sleep like Smaug’s gold when you already get so much of it? Are we never supposed to figure out if I’m developing early dementia or merely losing my sanity to sleep-deprivation?”^
I collected my pillow and returned to Muriel’s dog bed for the third time in a week rather than protest, trying not to angrily fixate on how peevish and self-pitying Crankenstein seems if I sleep late more than once or twice a week. Last week she got up with Muriel two days in a row and made it clear afterward that it wasn’t going to happen again, even though I’ve spent most of the past five years (almost 2,000 days) getting up with her every morning — and for several hundred of those mornings Crankenstein knew how wretched my sleep was and still didn’t bother to help.
Parkinson’s, like ‘Niles’ and other curveballs still to come, has altered our present and future in ways we both find challenging. Even as I grumble about our differences of our opinion (and reluctantly accept that a big part of my discomfort is her unapologetic willingness to take much more than she gives), I try to keep in mind how much stress we’re both under. This isn’t anything Crankenstein would’ve signed up for 10 years ago, had she known it was coming. Going through it with her probably isn’t something I would’ve signed up for, either, if I’d known the extent to which she was already prioritizing her own comfort over mine in some very important ways.
It’s easier to fully admit that to myself now than it was in the past, and I can say so here because this is where I work out a lot of those thoughts. Crankenstein and I have been over this many times, so it’s nothing new to her, and it isn’t meant to sound ominous — I don’t think either of us knows what it means for our present, much less what it means for the future. It’s simply something I’ve thought about a lot lately, including this morning, when the earthquake that wasn’t still managed to cause a few aftershocks.
* We’re still watching Northern Exposure nightly and I suspect he was there as Chris Stevens. But while we’re on the subject of Corbett, I have another unpopular opinion to share, and this time it isn’t “It’s gross to venerate murderers as saints, even if they’re cute in mugshots” or “Nesquik powder is better than chocolate syrup and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.” It’s about one of the actor’s signature roles and hopefully you’ll all still respect me in the morning: Sex and the City’s Aidan was preferable to Big. Yes, Big had a rakish charm out of a ’30s screwball comedy, but he was always going to leave you high and dry with a broken heart (and possibly an STI) when he moved on to the next best thing or succumbed to his excesses. Aidan was dependable, even if he did pass out in his tighty-whities while clutching a bucket of KFC and listening to baseball.
** Once Muriel’s been fed and gone outside, she whimpers pathetically (and seemingly endlessly) unless one of us remains within her line of sight for a prescribed length of time.
^ Notice the slight homoeroticism ‘Ice’ brings to that first helmet safety check. It’s slightly reminiscent of Mary Woronov in “Angels in Chains,” but more smirking and less closeted.