Finding the Silver Lining
“C ‘mon, get up! Just three more mornings ... two more mornings
That was my mantra all last week, as I stumbled through the house half asleep, in the predawn darkness, pulling covers off my sleeping daughters, who refused to believe that morning was here.
“But it’s not even light, yet,” they’d groan in protest, as if they did not understand that our schedules are yoked to the hands of the clock, not to the sun’s march across the sky. Even the dogs--believing that sunrise equals morning--refused to budge from their spots on the bed.
But tomorrow, when the alarm goes off, I can throw open the curtains and enlist an ally, as I march from room to room rousing my children from sleep.
We “fell back” into standard time this morning. Wake up, girls; take a look at the sun.
For most of us sleep-deprived souls, waking up is hard enough anyway. Two-thirds of Americans get less sleep than research says we need. One-quarter of us report difficulty getting up for work, no matter the season, at least a couple of times a week.
Americans purchased more bedside alarm clocks--more than 22 million--than television sets last year. And the snooze bar might be considered among the most appreciated innovations of the 20th century.
A new breed of alarm clock, which promises to wake us more gently because it relies on light instead of noise, reflects what researchers have discovered, and anyone who has to rise before dawn already knew: The human brain requires light to cue our bodies to get out of bed. Sleep researchers say the optimum wake-up call is not a noisy buzzer or the blare of a radio, but an illuminated room--as in one with sunlight streaming through its windows.
And as winter approaches and the days get shorter, our own internal body rhythms make it harder to get up in the mornings. Most people say they sleep longer in winter, and most of the rest of us want to but can’t.
For some, in the wake of Sept. 11, burrowing into slumber is an escape, a retreat. For others, it is an impossibility.
Watching the news on television or waking to news on the radio used to be merely habits that ushered us into and out of sleep. Now, they are tainted by tragedy. Fears of anthrax, airplanes, new terrorist attacks leave us anxious and wakeful. Visions of death and destruction dog our dreams.
No wonder it has been hard this season to muster the energy we needed for these weeks of predawn reveille. We are stuck in a sort of post-traumatic stress phase. A physical reluctance to face the day is a natural response to our collective pain and uncertainty.
What happened in the world while I was asleep? It used to be an innocent question. Now it’s a reminder of horrifying possibilities.
When I was young, I considered the autumn return to standard time a dirty trick aimed at cheating us kids out of playing time. We needed hours of sun after school for hide-and-seek and kickball games. Why waste it on the early morning hours, when no one was awake anyhow?
Later--when my own kids were small and played outside until the sun went down--I dreaded this final Sunday in October for the abrupt end it signaled to our summer, and the start of long evenings of indoor occupation.
But now, it feels like we’re held hostage not by the fading sun and the arbitrary time change, but by our own emotional overload and the chaos of an unstable world. We rise to face the day with dread, and move through our days with a sense of doom.
Maybe this year’s time change is just what we need. We can bemoan the early sundowns and dread the dark evening commutes it brings. Or we can consider it an opportunity for reflection.
Just as the sunlight will help us to embrace the mornings, the darkness gives us a chance to slow down, to settle in, to appreciate the sanctity of our homes. A chance to wrap our arms around those we love, and shut out a world that--even in daylight--seems too scary these days to trust.
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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.
