Ambian Dreams

Sleeplessness is not new to me. All my life, it seems, I have
suffered from in the grips of the moonlight. But when I was a very
little girl, I remember lying in bed listening intently for hours to
the stillness of the dark. I would stare out my door into the hallway
up at the red eye of the smoke alarm, which seemed to be the only other
eye open every night along with mine.

As the stillness hummed and the blackness turned to gray, on padded
pajama bottoms I would creep each night as I overheard the mutinies in
the sky, raining bombs on war torn cities to the guttural voice of the
narrator, pausing in the hallway just outside my parents bedroom door
as dim lights flickered. I could hear my father clear his throat, and I
would quietly creep, not quite on hands and knees, not quite standing,
slowly around the bed I would wind, hand gliding along the edge of the
king-sized pillow top mattress and around to my dad's side of the bed.
It always seemed to take hours to turn the last corner to reach
him.

I remember peering up at him as I squatted by his bedside, watching the
reflection of the TV in the lenses of his thick horn rimmed glasses,
unable to see if he was awake; jumping as he gargled out a deep
"AAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhh" of a snore. With my tiny dimpled hand I tapped his
enormous t-shirt laden belly. Tap, tap, tap, jiggle, jiggle. Tap, tap,
tap.

Then the TV glow of his glasses would shift to me and he would smile,
patting the spot between he and my mother. As I tucked myself under his
arm, head nestled against his chin, he smelled sweetly of Aqua
Velva.

Night after night, western after war movie, sci-fi after thriller my
daddy always made me a spot.

My feet were still small enough to fit into his hands back then. His
hands, hard from work, knuckles wrinkled from age, would completely
envelope my tender five year old feet; bombs blazing, guns firing,
submarines sinking, with TV in his eyes, I would sleep.