When I was small, I fell asleep telling stories to my stuffed animals (primarily Pooh Bear and Rounder the Dachshund). These tales were mostly about Travelling Puss, an invention of my father, or their own toy-like adventures, invented by me.
When I got old enough to read real books myself, and not long thereafter, old enough to be anxious at the dark and the phantoms lurking therein, I fell asleep reading other people’s books. My bedside reading light was both a nightlight and a warning beacon to hold at bay such unwanted visitors as burglars (code for any dark-intentioned assailant), or phantoms of illness. (I should never have read Marie Killilea’s book, With Love From Karen, with its vivid description of the author’s midnight heart attack. I was terrified of every chest pain for decades.)
A curious memory from a November more than two decades ago… My mother, then in her 70s, and I stayed at a friend’s home in Washington, D.C., and shared bedroom and bed. I awoke around 1am to find both of us had books on our chests, lights still on, my mother peacefully snoozing with her finger stuck in the last page she’d read.
This habit of reading myself into exhaustion, awakening in the small hours to turn off the light, lasted until I was well into my 50s. Then, the phantoms were suddenly no longer mine, but rather the illnesses assailing my father, my dear Timothy, eventually my own mother.
These days, I find I can turn out that bedside reading light, even if I am not really on the verge of sleep. Keeping it on hasn’t held off the thing I feared most: attacks on the people I loved best, by illness and death. They have proved stronger than any 60 watt bulb or any vigilance of mine. With that duty no longer required, I find I can now let the dream of the book, whether fiction like Travelling Puss or some book about buttons or chairs, lead me safely to sleep.