All the 2:00 ams
When we might have been sleeping
Little kids can’t imagine 2:00am. Of course really little kids can’t tell time, but I am not thinking of them. Those middle-single-digit-kids hold midnight as their ultimate goal. One day. One day they will make it until midnight and that will be the marker of being a big kid.
Then they are upper-single-digit-kids and they make it to midnight. Maybe on New Year’s eve already in their PJs, or perhaps waiting to catch the tooth fairy. But 2:00am? Midnight was the goal and every minute after that has diminishing returns. (I’d say that about 9:00pm now)
Perhaps the first 2:00am is a middle school sleepover. I hosted a sleepover in sixth grade when the star guest went home in the middle of the night. Stomach ache. Or maybe home-sickness. In either case her early departure dimmed her glow. Even she could have a stomach ache. Even she could miss her mom. Other than her soccer skills and ski slope nose we were not so different after all. Then finally 2:00am. Some of the kids are lumps in their sleeping bags becoming the experimental subjects of the ones who triumphed over tiredness. Hands in water glasses (has that ever worked?). Sharpie on faces. Pelted popcorn settling over them like snow. 2:00 is power.
High school. We learned from the near biblical source of gremlins that nothing good happens after midnight. This is particularly true when combined with alcohol. The few nights a year when curfew is extended, or “staying the night at straight A Ann’s” is accepted 2:00 is when large groups become smaller and connections that will last forever, as long as forever is until the next school day, are formed. (Writing note: I don’t know why I am writing in the passive tense. I don’t like it.)
In college if I saw 2:00 am I was either studying or playing 500, a card game that is easier than bridge but still exciting enough to be a second major. (If you play 500 I would like to hear from you, my list of fourths has dwindled.) I know that sounds exciting…and it is. I mean was. Sitting in the library at that hour made me a better student. Not because I was getting anything done of course, but because I was playing the role so well. Those were the times that I learned to spin my pen over my fingers and thumb, stack notebooks just so, and highlight rainbow-ly and random-ly. And sitting cross legged on my decrepit futon with three other people, two of whom wanted to be there, was the soothing precurser to social media. The dopamine of the first game, and then chasing it with diminishing returns. At least there were other humans present.
In my twenties 2:00 was the hour that my bar/restaurant closed. The hour that I most acted out. Every day I saw 2:00am. Many of those days I chased different dopamine hits, chemical contentment, and the sad soothing feeling of dawn as I wound down and finally slept.
In my thirties 2:00 was about milk. Dripping, dried, burped, expressed. Whines and screams, only some of them coming from the babies. Then, finally, the nursing was over. The pregnancies were done in their own ways, but at 2:00 am my circadian maternal clock went off and I was up to take care of someone who was sleeping better than I was.
In my forties (I just lost the thread here when I re-realized that fourties has NO U in it. Weird. And lonely, I want you in my forties…what is left of them.) 2:00 was for imaginary heart attacks, self criticism, and regretting living with four legged creatures. I have gone through a lot of tums, promised a tomorrow of writing and exercise and some form of chia, and rubbed cramps out of my legs for accommodating pets who ARE NOT INFANTS AND CAN NOT BE SMOTHERED. Probably.
Now I am at the very end of my forties (still no U, so sad) and 2:00 is for soothing things. Like meditating, and weirdly timed showers, stretching, and watching three hours of people who live in a van making matcha.
I think I know what is coming in the next decades, reflux, reflux. Also some old favorites, imaginary heart attacks (see reflux), pet regret, self-judgement, thinking about my kids (just not about milk) and maybe matcha. There might still be matcha. And perhaps I could add some chia seeds.
Tell me about your 2:00am.
The thoughts and fears of 2AM, or 3, or 4, or 5 oddly dissipate the next day. Where do they go?
Reading. Always just one more chapter...