Brain Movies

Every morning I ask Emily how she slept the night before.   Usually she responds “Great!”  Very occasionally she looks sleepier than normal and I ask her if she had a decent night’s sleep.  She’ll scratch her head, mussing her hair and giving me a window in to the teenager she will one day become and say “I couldn’t fall asleep…” or “I woke up in the middle of the night…”

Em doesn’t suffer in silence.  Usually I am well aware of her late night wakefulness.  I paid my dues with the kid that co-slept almost full time until she was three and appeared in my bed in the wee hours of the morning almost nightly until she was four.  The first time she told me she’d awakened I was surprised.  She hadn’t come to climb in my bed, her room was as we’d left it the night before so I tentatively asked her what she did all night.  “I watched brain movies.”

At first I thought she meant dreams.  But the more we talked about it she explained that when she can’t sleep she looks at “brain movies, about my day, or about things that have never even happened….”

The other evening I was sitting on the couch with MQD and I got myself all choked up (shocking, I know.)  “We’ve been married for almost two weeks, and I remember less and less of the day, of the actual event every day.”  There are moments in your life that you think you’ll hold on to forever.  And then the days pass by and slowly the memory fades.  I may not remember the details of the day, but I will never forget how I felt.

I couldn’t sleep last night.  Woke up around three o’clock in the morning and was awake for the better part of the rest of the night.  I tried watching brain movies.  I have a lot of excellent footage from the last few weeks to choose from.   Kind of wishing I could kick back and watch some brain movies right now….

When I can’t sleep Fish doesn’t sleep, either.  He keeps me company.  Follows me from room to room.  Wondering, I am sure, what exactly we are doing awake and whether it would be appropriate to take my entire spot in the bed.

He is definitely watching brain movies right now…