Here comes the sun

I wish I’d known years ago that my ability to sleep well might have an expiration date. I used to be so good at it. In those early years, I could drop off within minutes, stay asleep all night, and snooze for a 10 to 12-hour stretch any time I had the chance. It was easy.

Until it wasn’t. At some point during my late 40s, I transformed from Sleeping Beauty into a wakeful worrywart. Suddenly the thing that used to be so effortless became the thing I literally lay awake at night thinking about. The more I tried, the less sleep I got. I’d wake up in the morning and mentally rearrange my day in hopes I could squeeze in a nap that never came.

After several months as a mom zombie, I went to the doctor for help, and things began to get better. I transformed our bedroom into a cool, dark, nocturnal cave. I replaced the sheer curtains with thick black-out drapes and nixed the nightlight. On doctor’s orders, I made sure there were no glowing electronic lights anywhere in the room because, when you’re struggling with insomnia, the slightest stimulus can make your brain keep spinning until the wee hours of morning.

Complete darkness plus the right treatment finally got me back into a regular sleeping pattern. But once my body began to catch up on sleep, it often wanted to stay snuggled into the dreamy cocoon I’d created. Because light no longer enters the room, my body doesn’t easily sense daybreak. Waking up at 7 a.m. looks just as dark as it does at 2 a.m.

Like most people, I rely on alarms. I used to set an app on my smartphone to wake me up with pleasant sounds like tinkling bells, but those were too easy to ignore. When I tried more aggressive alarms like sirens, I woke up feeling like I’d been shot out of a cannon into a knife fight.

While searching for a happy medium, I discovered sunrise alarm clocks. Mine looks like a white full moon positioned about a foot away from my pillow. About thirty minutes before my alarm goes off, the white orb begins to glow dark red, then yellow, then white, growing steadily brighter until it reaches a supernova that lights up my cave and convinces my body it’s morning, complete with built-in bird sounds.

So far, this slow-glow method is working. Before the wake-up birds start chirping, my body senses the light and emerges from the deepest levels of sleep to something more agreeable to the idea of waking up. It’s not foolproof, but overall, a programmable sunrise is a much gentler way to start the day than a jarring jolt of beeps.

In a perfect world, the only alarm I’d ever want would be a dog named Mac. There’s something so wonderful about waking up to a creature who is always so genuinely thrilled to see you, no matter how bad your hair looks. In May, Mac moved back to our house for the summer with our 18-year-old daughter, who had just finished her first year of college. On mornings when Mac is in the house, he jumps on the foot of the bed and sniffs his way up to my face to check for signs of life. If I fake sleep, he’ll flop down beside me for a short snooze session — a 90-pound Goldendoodle turned spoon with top-notch cuddling skills.

But after a few minutes, he stands back up to hover over my head, breathing loudly. When I reach up to pet him, he says good morning with sloppy dog smooches. If I wave him off and roll over for more sleep, he turns up the pressure by beginning a self-bathing session that includes moist, slurpy sounds that are so disgusting I have to get out of bed to make it stop. If this dog were programmable, I’d never oversleep again.

But in August, Mac and his favorite human will move back to college for sophomore year. Our Corgi would gladly take over as my four-legged alarm clock if he could, but his legs are too short to jump on a bed, and his bark is loud enough to trigger an early morning panic attack. He prefers to wait in his crate until one of his human servants is ready to feed him breakfast.

So I’ll go back to relying on the synthetic sunrise to coax me out of the cave when the time is right. That middle-aged wave of insomnia has taught me not to take restful sleep for granted.

From my cave to yours, here’s hoping you never lose a good snooze.

Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her book is available on Amazon.