Sleeping Late

Taking care of Bill is a twenty-four-hour-a-day seven-day-a-week job. I try to get as much sleep as possible so I have enough energy to tackle the day to day tasks of his care, housework, and my writing obligations. I often take short afternoon naps. The following poem from How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver describes how I lie awake on a Sunday morning, wishing I could go back to sleep and not being successful.

Bliss

“Just give me one more hour of sleep,”

I silently pray

to my husband, unable to care for himself,

my body, the world in general.

It’s eight in the morning.

I lie with my eyes closed,

enjoy the Sunday morning peace.

It doesn’t last.

When you were growing up, could you sleep in when you didn’t have to get up and go to school, or did you rise early every morning because you lived on a farm or had a paper route or other obligations? When my younger brother had an early morning paper route, he often overslept. Needless to say, when my dad, an early riser, didn’t find his morning paper neatly rolled up outside the front door, he awakened the entire household by yelling, “Ah hell! Andy!”

By the way, you can order an autographed copy of How to Build a Better Mousetrap directlyfrom me through Pay Pal for which you don’t need an account. When you visit my Website, click on the Pay Pal link in the ordering information section at the bottom of my book’s page. If you have trouble, you can contact me by using the e-mail link on any one of my site’s pages.

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of We Shall Overcome and How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver