Sleeping at 90 MPH [matt]

Tonight I held my daughter, rocking her for what felt like hours. She was obviously tired and her six-month body needed sleep. With my soothing whispers and gentle movements in the rocking chair she reacted with screams and tears. After she is asleep, I discover myself rubbing my eyes and yawning in a similar fashion. But I too choose to stay up, ignoring the cues my body provides. I am discovering that there are some major complications in our relationship with sleep.


Bud, my wife’s grandfather, was in a Yakima hospital showing symptoms of dementia, but also exhibiting moments of clarity. At one point I was standing at the end of his bed while he slept. I was most likely thinking of how inept I felt when it came to what to say to a person in this situation. When he woke, I clumsily asked him how his nap was, to which he replied “I was sleeping ninety miles per hour, Matt, and I didn’t ever want to wake up.”

My daughter sleeps at seventy miles per hour. No matter how fussy or awake she is, the moment my Subaru hits I-5, her eyes get heavy and her head begins to nod.

Ezekiel, in a dreaming vision, saw four creatures made of wheels. Does this mean the great prophet also slept at high speeds? And if so, how fast did he sleep?

Helene Cixous once claimed “we can hope to move closer to everything we can’t say without dying of fright through the School of Dreams.” It’s a complicated statement, but one which I believe points to the paradox of sleep; we need it, and can find safety in it, but there is something to be feared there as well. Jacob dreamed of the ascending and descending angels; there is something peaceful to think of angels ascending, but descending angels can stir fear. After all, these are the same beings who a few chapter before had performed some serious brimstone punishment on Sodom and Gomorrah. In dreams, in sleep, there is true biblical awe, the kind of awe that is charged with an excited fear.

When it became obvious that my dad was not going to defeat cancer a second time, he started to fight against sleep. He knew that most cancer patients ultimately die in their sleep, or at least a drug-induced coma of sorts, and he had no intention of going gently into any sort of night. Instead he fought. Though he was on a variety of high-powered painkillers, including oxycodone, he insisted on staying awake as much as possible. He would sit next to you in a daze, but refuse to close his eyes. He would take a nap, but remind me to wake him up in under an hour. He was afraid, though I will never know if it was a fear of death or dreams.

I rarely dream. When I do, I typically forget all or most of the dream by the time I wake. The one thing I sometimes remember is who was in the dream. Every dream I remember includes at least one relative and one celebrity. It’s a funny thought really, my mom, Brad Pitt, and me running errands together. Sure, it’s not angels moving up and down on some celestial escalator, yet there is still something fearful there. There is no control. I have to slip into a strange new world and trust that it will be good. Cixous describes this as “crossing the frontiers to the other world without transition, at the stroke of a signifier.” She finds this enjoyable. I am not so certain.

Describing faith, Abraham Heschel claimed that it “is an event…a moment in which the soul of man communes with the glory of God.” He goes on to say, “Man’s walled mind has no access to a ladder upon which he can, on his own strength, rise to knowledge of God. Yet his soul is endowed with translucent windows that open to the beyond.” Perhaps every time we close our eyes and allow sleep to take us, it is a moment of faith. Maybe sleep is where the largest translucent window is hidden.

Dad died in his sleep. There was no coma, just a very tough day, followed by a long night. When I woke up in the morning, things were too quiet, and I found him sitting on his chair with his eyes open. Heschel said, “God is not always silent, and man is not always blind.” I hope at least one of those was true for Dad.

The one dream I actually remember came after a close friend died of a drug overdose. He and I were in a valley where multiple rivers converged. It was a warm day and we were running across meadows and wading through the waters without fear. I woke up in tears, happy and sad to have seen and spoken with my friend. The paradox of sleep is too much for me. It is too profound and moves too quickly. It is too amazing and too frightening. But tonight, on faith, I go there yet again to learn from the School of Dreams.