A Value to Silence

My dad in 2015, ready to "coffee" in his pajamas.

I am turning into my dad.

I have had a week of chronic insomnia. I don't have issues getting to sleep, I have issues staying asleep. I'll often wake around 1 or 2 am and be awake for 3 hours or so, falling back asleep an hour before I have to get up.

Each night I go to bed hopeful that I am so incredibly exhausted that I will sleep through my witching hour. But this week my brain has made it difficult to fall asleep and woke me back up around 1:00, no matter that I only finally fell asleep at 11. 

My dad was a chronic insomniac as well. Except it seems to me that he embraced it as a part of his life. He was a manager at J.I. Case in Racine, WI, in the 1970s, and they had a lot of issues with downtime on the lines that he'd been charged with solving. Later in life, when I was a working adult and we would spend time together, he told me that he did his best thinking in the middle of the night. He would turn the problem over in his head, look at it from all angles, and would often come to what was the best solution. Sometimes he was so motivated by what he'd just solved that he would go to work shortly after, so he could set the idea into motion. That meant that he sometimes arrived at work at 3 or 4 am, long before the day shift had started their work. This gave him respect in the eyes of the line workers, as he was the only "suit" who ever beat them to work. Those were the same days when he would arrive back home at 2, a little before the day shift finished their day, so it was a treat for us that dad was home early. All I knew as a child was that dad was home early, I didn't know he's already put in a nearly 12-hour day. 

Later in his life, when he was retired and living in the log cabin in Arkansas, his days and nights were his own. And yet, somehow, he often woke in the middle of the night. His brain, like mine, if not given a problem to solve at that hour, will create a problem out of something that isn't to give you something to think about. When I was pregnant with our first-born, her entire nursery design, colors, furniture, patterns, got planned between 1:00 and 3:00 in the morning. Designing and painting a nursery is obviously not an urgent "problem," but that's when my brain decided it should be thought about.

One day he and I were talking on the phone and he was telling me that he and his wife Terry had woken up early in the morning. They were both just lying awake in bed, so they chatted for a while, then decided to get up. They put a pot of coffee on, he made some Southern sausage with eggs, they had breakfast and talked about the day ahead. And then they went back to bed and decided to start the day later.

I asked him, "Wait, what time did you go back to bed?"

"Oh, it was probably around 6:00," he replied.

"So what time did you get up?" I asked.

"I think it was about 3," he said.

I remember laughing at the time. "Dad, 3:00 isn't the morning, it's the middle of the night!" His attitude was that morning was whenever you decided it would be.

And so here I am, at 4:30 in the morning, sitting in my living room, writing this post, having finished my first cup of coffee. The blinds on the windows are open as we have a snowstorm starting, and if it were light out I would be able to see it coming down. My dad would have loved our new home, our location with woods and fields, and wildlife all around. Unlike his extroverted daughter, he did not shy away from silence. He could sit in his darkened living room, a cup of coffee in hand, say nothing and take in the stillness. 

For the first time this week, I slept through my witching hour and managed to get more than 4 hours of sleep in a row. I woke up unreasonably early, at an hour when I typically would have said "it's the middle of the night." And even though I still only got 5 hours of sleep, they were consecutive. Wow! I am refreshed.

And so here I sit in a darkened living room, a fireplace flickering away, cup of coffee beside me, while the rest of the house sleeps.

Good morning, Dad. 

Your Input Requested: A preview, Kind Of

Taken summer 1989, 3 months after high school graduation.

What follows is an except for the start of my memoir. It's not really *my* memoir, is that of Paul Gilles, 1971-1992. I would so greatly appreciate your input on this format. We are moving through time, from the 1990's through present day. Does that work? Would you read on? Let me know. And I am so grateful for your honest feedback.

12/18/90 Random Dream

A couple nights ago I had a strange dream. The setting was an old farm or some type of rural building. I was there with an older man, possibly the owner. He was somehow shot and killed and I was shocked by his death. However, this wasn’t the main part of the dream, as that happened quickly at the beginning.

The burial was the appalling part of the dream. His body, no casket or coffin, was lowered by two ropes into a grave which was filled with water. He was bloated and white, but once under the water he took on a greenish cast. They took the ropes out from under him, causing his body to roll in the water. A dirty glass was placed over him and planks were nailed over the glass, spaced apart so you could still see his body. His body floated up to the glass, pressed against it in a desperate way as if trying to escape. Then I woke up.

Good beginning to a diary, isn’t it?

Hindsight: A Little Background

Here’s where you’re dropping in: It’s 1990. I am 19 years old, living in St. Cloud, Minnesota, during my sophomore year of college. My parents moved around a lot when I was younger, but when I was in the 6^th grade we moved to Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, a place I will call my hometown the rest of my life. Since my family expected my sister and I to go to a four-year college, I made plans to go to college somewhere as far away as home as possible without being too expensive. Far enough that it was a pain-in-the-ass to drive, 9 hours one way, but not so far that you needed to buy a plane ticket because we didn’t have the money for that. It was also a state school in Minnesota that had reciprocity with Wisconsin. I couldn’t go to an in-state college for cheaper. And, since my parents divorced when I was in high school, I figured the cheaper the better, because I would end up footing this bill. Eventually.

The divorce, my childhood, my being in a different school every year from 3^rd through 6^th grades, is a different story. Back to the story at hand.

My high school years were spent in a small town in a small school. Which means that I never dated anyone from my high school. My romances were always summer romances, discovered on the shores of Lake Michigan with boys from Sheboygan North or South, two high schools from the larger city nearby. We often met at the beginning of summer and broke up once school started. I was far too busy for romance during the school year. Plus, I didn’t want the drama of ever having dated anyone from my own school and the awkwardness that happens after you date and break up, so I never dated anyone in my school. Okay, once. But…he was the exception. Regardless, I spent my high school years in happy geekhood, spending time in the band room practicing my saxophone, or in the theatre, or as a part of the speech team, the ultimate geekiness in high school. I couldn't care less, I loved high school. 

Paul and I probably met in middle school band, I honestly don’t remember when. He played trumpet, I played saxophone. I remember him during our band trip to Florida my junior year. He was quirky, quiet, and made me laugh a lot. After that we probably talked a little during band practice, and he was in my advanced math class and helped me a lot because math wasn’t my thing, but otherwise we didn’t talk outside of school. I knew absolutely nothing about his family, his background, his growing up, except for who he was at the time.

Until. Until.

A week before our high school graduation our yearbooks were delivered, and the senior class had a party at the local park to sign each other’s yearbooks and share memories. I wanted to have him sign my yearbook so I approached him while he sat among his friends, all lean, muscular boys who were on the cross-country team with him. He wrote something like, “We should go to ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ together this summer,” or something like that. I took that as an invitation, and about a week after graduation I called him and asked when we should go see the movie. We set a date and that was the beginning.

That summer, we did everything together. We went to movies, we hung out in the ways that only teens can hang out, doing nothing but everything at the same time. We laughed together. Hard. We watched “Monty Python” episodes and movies, something he was trying to introduce me to but I really wasn’t getting the humor. We went to a Brewers baseball game in Milwaukee with a group of friends, who having not seen us since graduation, saw us together and said, “Wait, are you two together?!”

By fall we were madly in love. And I was bound for St. Cloud, Minnesota, 9 hours away, and he was bound for Sheboygan Technical College 10 minutes away from our hometown, which was cheap and saved him money on room and board.

Fuck.

My Writing Project: Paul's Memoir

My journal from 1990-1993.

I have begun a writing project, one that I said back in 1993 deserved to be written. I am working on a memoir of my first love, Paul, who died of cancer at the age of 20.

He and I went to high school together but didn't start dating until after we graduated. We were together throughout college and in the fall of my junior year he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. While doctors said his chances of survival were 80%, after 10 months of aggressive chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, he became a part of the 20% that doesn't make it.

I've been in touch with Paul's mother and asked for her blessing to put this down on paper, which she agreed to, though talking about Paul and looking at things that remind her of him is still incredibly painful 28 years after his death. Her grief and mine were and continue to be so different — I had lost my future husband, she lost her child.

I am in the process of going back through my journals and diaries back from when Paul and I were together. The journals document our relationship, its ups and downs, his cancer diagnosis and treatment and eventual death.

One journal covers the majority of the time, the next is a little snippet and then mostly empty, as I had graduated college and life became, well, life.

This was the opening entry of the first journal. I find it ironic because little did I know that by the end of the same journal I would have an actual body to deal with, one that belonged to someone I loved very much.

Here's my first journal entry:

A couple nights ago I had a strange dream. The setting was an old farm or some type of rural building. I was there with an older man, possibly the owner. He was somehow shot and killed and I was shocked by his death. However, this wasn’t the main part of the dream, as that happened quickly at the beginning. 

The burial was the appalling part of the dream. His body, no casket or coffin, was lowered by two ropes into a grave which was filled with water. He was bloated and white, but once under the water he took on a greenish cast. They took the ropes out from under him, causing his body to roll in the water. A dirty glass was placed over him and planks were nailed over the glass, spaced apart so you could still see his body. He floated up to the glass, pressed against it in a desperate way as if trying to escape. Then I woke up. 

Good beginning to a diary, isn’t it?

And so this process begins. I may or may not update this blog as this continues, we'll see how this goes.