When you’re worried and you can’t sleep

Consider moonlight and memories and macaroni and cheese

Photo by Tony Detroit on Unsplash

I spent much of this morning pacing around the house and wringing my hands. I mean this quite literally. This last month has been filled with so much anxiety and sorrow and trepidation. I have never seen the kind of hatred and division we are seeing now in this country. Sometimes, lying in bed at night and trying to sleep, I can feel my pulse racing and at those times I consider getting up and getting a paper bag to breathe into for the old CO2 cure.

But don’t let’s go on about that. Let me tell you something that happened the other night that brought me a great deal of peace, and gave me the best night of sleep I’ve had in a long time.

There is a children’s book I used to read my daughters and the other night someone read it to me before I went to sleep. It’s a simple story written in lyrical prose about a family in a house on a hill under the moon at night. It talks about what various people in the family are doing, about how the mother of the house is washing dishes and thinking about her husband, who used to chase her through the grass. It talks about the grandparents who live in the house, how the grandfather is lying in bed with a book. He is not reading it though; instead he is looking at his wife whom he finds more beautiful now than she ever was. It talks about the boy who lives in the house outside running in the moonlight with the dog. It talks about a baby asleep in a crib, and the baby’s hands are curled into tiny fists. It talks about the little girl who lives there leaning far out over the sill of her bedroom window “with a waiting look on her face.” When the boy is called in, and he climbs the stairs to go to bed, he touches spots of moonlight on the banister—“for luck.” Eventually, everyone in the house is asleep, but the moon is awake, shining down on all of them.

I’m not quite sure why I found this so comforting. The wakeful presence of an ancient body in the sky? The calmness and respect given to each member of the family? The simplicity of the prose? The way the story is short, and ends well? My remembering reading it to my daughters in a far different time? (I will note without shame that this last sentence brought tears to my eyes. )

I am loath to give you the name of this book, because it’s not available anymore— it was published in 1976. Maybe you can find it with a used book seller, though. The title is THE FAMILY UNDER THE MOON and the author is Nancy Jewel. But even if you can’t find this particular title, there are so many wonderful, simple, and beautiful books that might help sooth ragged souls into sleep.