The sounds that fill my ear as they sleep cool my mind. Snoring, breathing, sleep. When I last was able to sleep I can’t remember dreaming. I usually have such beautiful elaborate dreams that inspire me to write about the world that I see, feel, and nearly touch. But now it has been days, week, years since I can remember real sleep. My eyes blur and the text in front of me spins and flows across the screen of white. When the sleep began to elude me – the dreams, the inspiration, did too. I drift on a sea of convoluted phrases. I dive into an ocean of adjectives, fishing for just the right one. I need caffeine to make them swim straight instead of swarm. Where does one get caffeine at 5 o’clock in the morning, the day after Christmas? My eyes sting and my nose tingles and there is something burning my throat. Probably getting sick again, the kids will get it first, be sick, I will lovingly take care of their tiny noses and big fevers; then He will get it. My third baby, My darling love. He will get to sleep for 24 hours straight; there is no one calling his name at all hours of the day, no one nursing on his milk. He will sleep undisturbed and sleep hard, not even an earth quake or tornado could wake him. Then I will “get it” I will have to continue to care for those younger and smaller than me, and when it is time He will return to life, free of the burden of illness and no sleep, free of the suckling baby and free of the ill child who only wants to be held. His freedom will drag me into a battle against myself…DO I HAVE TIME TO BE SICK…or do I just want to power through? The morning sky begins to blush as I write, the outline of the trees against its rising color reminds me of a dark rain cloud, but I can’t remember why. When HIS snore rises above all the soft breathing and I have to shake him to adjust so he won’t wake the surprisingly quiet sleepers. They seem to wait till I give up on my sleep all together before they can sleep peacefully. Perhaps it is my imagination but I wonder sometimes, is this my drug? I have a theory that all great Art can be traced back to a specific drug of choice: drink, drug, dissatisfaction. And I wonder since I hardly do any of those, and not nearly to the tune of some great artists, if this is my drug. The total twisting, mind-blowing drug of sleep-deprivation and a little bit of insanity? If this is a drug and my mind is being blown by it wher e is my great art? Is if locked inside my head, will it flow onto the pages of my sleepless nights, seeping through the coils of woven white like the leaked pee on the sheet of my life. Wow did I just write that? God its awful! See this is why I need sleep. The sky turns from a blushing pale blue to a more awake blue and I wonder, should I let them sleep in and allow the cycle to repeat itself before I can get a chance to catch up? Or should I force them to get up, live this day like we didn’t spend 2.5 hours on the road, arrive at our destination at 11, and deal with nightmares off and on until 2, then be woken up at 4 by a leaked diaper and a crying baby, and finally have to get up ourselves to pee too, only to realize that it is 5 and we will probably be better up than down anyways? Was that a run-on of run-on sentences or what!? Should I let the snoring continue and hope that all will be in a better mood if I do? Or should I risk another sleepless night? “Mommy have you been awake the whole night?” I hear a scratchy little voice call….”Shhhh, honey just go back to sleep it’s not time to be up yet.”