For Fred's Peace

It's as if we are living in shifts here at Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs).

I slept from 2 to 5 am. Fred went to bed around 7 am. While I am fairly predictable in my hours, he seems to be changing his daily. I don't know how to help.

However, through the years -- through the twenty years as of June 1, 2010! -- I have learned how not to hurt or hinder him in this tough business of adequate sleep, rest.

It's in large part due to ADHD, he thinks, and he would be the one to know.

I have been schooled in Fredness. His particular version of Sleep Hygiene is rigid because completely sequential-- if interrupted, he must start the process all over again, from the top, at the beginning, dès le début... adding at least an hour to the complicated regime of calming his harried and brilliant mind enough to sleep.

No lamps should be lit. Instead, we each use a reading light, either banded on the head or attached to a book.

Fresh water sits by a precise stack of current reading material.

Teeth are flossed and brushed -- then he spends about 43 seconds gargling.

Before climbing into bed, he tours The Manor in a kind of proprietary shorthand, making sure that the drawbridge is up, the wattle is daubed, and The Moat's electric eels are fully charged, but not indiscriminately shocking.

(Not true eels, these creatures are actually knife fish, native to South America -- and to our Moat. Called apex predators by learned ichthyologists, we have found them nonetheless susceptible to Gounod's Faust, in particular The Jewel Song -- this 1903 recording of Suzanne Adams' version of the toe-tapper comes courtesy of Michigan State University's Vincent Voice Library. Anyway, it is due to this constitutional weakness that we had to curtail outdoor performances by the lusty-voiced bonne et belle Bianca Castafiore. The last time she entertained moat-side, we lost a half-dozen of The Manor Guard Fish -- and Captain Haddock was heard to exclaim, "Powerful stuff... She reminds me of a hurricane that hit my ship once.")

Until we excavated the Underground Passage from Renascences, the twelth-century tavern historically bartended by the Panofsky clan (and voted Best Artisanal Ale by Tête de Hergé patrons), Fred used to wait up for all Manor stragglers. If Bianca, one of the Domestic Staff, Marmy, Uncle Kitty Big Balls, Sam-I-Am, or -- God forbid -- Dobby, our little idiot, were out making a late night of it, Fred strummed now a guitar, now just his naked fingers in a show of anxious patience. The usual culprit? That would be Cabana Boy, who rarely wanders home before Last Call. Therein lies the explanation, I suppose, for the difficult and extensive Contract Negotiations between Management [Fred] and Cabana Boy [the metrosexual face of Labor]. Last year, we had to have federal mediators come in.

(The Manor runs on 100% Union Labor.)

Since getting an equity loan on Captain Haddock's ancestral home, this beloved Marlinspike Hall, we've added the Underground Passage and nerves are much less frayed; People come and go in their own time, unsupervised and on the Honor System; Fred can hop into bed at night confident that all our Mavens and Denizens are safe and sound. Well, safe, at least.

Back from making his nightly rounds, Fred rearranges the Pile of Cats artfully arrayed across his side of our mammoth bed, takes a few sips of water, expels several deep, heartrending sighs, and snuggles into his pile of pillows, book in hand.

He's almost there...

This is the moment propitious to pillow talk and we murmur at one another for five to nine minutes, comforting, laughing, looking forward.

After that, no talking! Not even to say "Good night, sleep well, my love..." or "I think fire has broken out in La Recepción again... and I fear for our massive collection of Bone China Coffee Cups, Mugs, and Saucers!"

That's the ideal version of bedtime (also the family friendly edition!).

Lately, though, we've had to recognize that I cannot sleep much and that Fred struggles with snarky demons late at night. I am blessed with techniques and means to ease my pain, even though I also won't pass up the opportunity to complain about it, at least not here.

The mind can leave us exposed and vulnerable when the rest of the world signs off and finds its rest. Fred managed to survive a childhood spent in pure Hell -- beat mercilessly, neglected, horribly abused. Somehow, he survived with his native goodness and sweetness intact, still willing to take the risk of... other people.

But in those quiet moments, those limnal moments, he is afraid, he is small, he is alone -- and his memories assume a stature greater than they merit. Along with the daily struggle to focus and organize from within his ADHD, he fights the terror of post traumatic stress. He knows his mother and father are dead; He knows that no one will ever again bash his head with pots, pans, shoes -- until he falls, senseless; He knows that he will never be denied entry to his own home, or forced to make his bed in an alley with the winos; He knows he matters, knows he is dear.

But in the initial moments of surrender to sleep, this sweet man lies open to attack... open to the cruelty of memory.

So yes, we pass as ships in the night when the terrors loom too large.

I lay in bed, alone, and pray for guidance, and pray for creativity.

And pray for Fred's peace, for Fred's safety here, at least, in Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs).