The Three AM Wakeup Call

At one time I thought women were cursed, because they had to endure fifty years of monthly cramps, which then turned into the nightly sweats. But I am wiser now. I know that there are several good reasons for women to wake up at three in the morning, panting and hyperventilating. That is the time of night when your adult children forget that they are now adults, and do stupid things.

Most religions and cultures have some sort of ceremony marking the passage from childhood to adulthood. Thirteen is usually a good time to acknowledge that your child is old enough and smart enough to get into real trouble despite your best efforts. It is the point at which your child surpasses you in both intelligence and stupidity. It is the beginning of the Three-a-m-phone-call --"Uh, Mom?"

Now, when your kid is thirteen, you are still probably in a position to have more children, but are way too wise to do so. The Three-a-m-phone-call at this point in your life wakes you from a dead sleep.  Some parent calls to say your kid is puking his guts out, because he and his buddies decided it was time to learn how to binge drink. You get in your car, and drive by auto-pilot, pick up the wretched child, and are back in bed asleep in an hour. In the morning you wake up with stomach cramps, but, hey, that is hormonal. You are supposed to wake up feeling crappy every month. It has nothing to do with your Three-a-m-phone-call.

By the time my man/child reached thirty, I had become an expert at the Three-a-m-phone-call. See, by then, I was waking up all by myself, between two and three am, panting, sweating and unable to go back to sleep. Once the call was good. He called to tell me the streets in our neighborhood were flooding, but that he was safe at a friend's. Was I okay? he asked  I couldn't go back to sleep marveling at his consideration. I felt like Sally Fields, "He loves me--he really loves me!"

But most of the time, the Three-a-m-phone-call is not good. Recently, I was lying awake sweating and the phone rang. "Uh, Mom?"  as if it was going to be someone else answering my phone at three am.  He was calling from Thailand, where it was three in the afternoon. My son had laid a moped down on top of himself, and broken his collar bone badly. The doctor asked for umpteen gillion bahts to operate, more than my son had available on his credit card. It took a moment for my hyperventilating to subside, as I realized that was really only about $4,000. I considered asking the doctor to remove my son's tonsils, appendix and any other useless organ while he was in there. Couldn't do either of those for $4,000 in the States. But, because I was fully awake, I was aware that this was not the time to joke with the doctor. When I hung up, my husband, who sleeps the sleep of the innocent -- or so he tells me, mumbled, "At least that wasn't the Thai police." Amen to that, but I still lay in bed, sweating and fully awake. Around five, I fell back into a deep sleep to be awakened by the alarm at five thirty. Time to get up and go to work.

Sometimes I long for "the sleep of the innocent" which my husband claims is his, but it would be wrong. Mothers can never be innocent. We have the problems of the world on our shoulders, and that, my dears, is why we are awake in the night.