Maybe it’s a sign that I’m getting older
but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to sleep.
When
I was 15, I could fall asleep sitting up in class while my brother Jack had a
freakish ability to sleep with his eyes wide open.
“Oh
my God, I wish I could do that!” my sister once said with an equal mix of
admiration and resentment when Jack slept right through one of our mother’s dull
lectures about the importance of straight As, all while managing to look
remarkably alert.
“His
eyes never moved from mum’s face!” Michelle told her best friend, Betty Chan
who said that her brother once slept through
an earthquake.
“Seriously,
what is it with boys?” Michelle asked crossly, completely unaware that many years
later, she’d still be asking the same question.
Anyway,
my point is, back in the day, it was easy to sleep.
These
days, I’m like Sleeping Beauty with OCD. The room temperature has to be just
right. If it’s too cold, I toss. Too warm, I turn. The bed sheets have to be
folded back just so. It helps if I’ve had a nice hot cup of chamomile tea just
before getting into bed. I can’t have any noise. Which means I usually can’t
sleep until my flatmates have turned in, otherwise the sound of their gossiping
in the kitchen will keep me awake.
And
when I finally fall asleep, I am plagued by dreams. A rotating cast of people
from my past will show up. I’ll be in taxis that are lost. I make my way
through Takashimaya but the layout has changed, so I spend a lot of time
wandering the aisles. I suddenly realize that I have an exam in half an hour
for which I’ve not studied. Sometimes, I’m sitting on the loo in a public place
and there are a lot of people I know around me and I’m trying desperately to be
discrete. In other dreams, I’m wandering around wearing just a tee-shirt and no
pants or underwear.
Of
course, I wake up exhausted.
“Maybe
you’re sleeping too much?” Saffy said the other day on Skype during her lunch
hour.
“Eight
hours isn’t too much, is it?” I asked.
“Maybe
you only need six? They say the older you get…” I disconnected Skype.
“Try
drinking some sherry before bed,” my mother suggested.
“She
must have mistaken me for her!” I told my sister.
Amanda
finally suggested that I might be having some psychic problems and dragged me
to her regular psychic, a chubby good-natured Filipina called Mel.
Mel
shuffled her tarot cards, laid them all out in a row and solemnly announced
that my grandmother was trying to get in touch with me. I said this was
physically impossible as both my grandmothers are dead. Then I remembered where
I was and who I was talking to and said, “Oh.”
Then
I added, “Oh, God, no!”
“It’s
your father’s mother. She’s trying to send you a message!” Mel said in the same
tone that your office receptionist might use when you ask if anyone called
while you were out at lunch.
“What
does she want?”
“It’s
not clear,” Mel said firmly. “But you have to be more receptive to her messages.
You’re blocking her, that’s why you can’t sleep!”
“God,
what does she expect?” Saffy later said. “If my dead grandmother was trying to get in touch with me, I’d be
blocking her too!”
“Maybe
she’s trying to tell you where the rest of her fortune is hidden?” said Amanda,
Professional Gold Digger.
“Did
Mel say how you’re meant to be more
receptive?” Saffy asked.
“Well,
apparently, now that I know the cause of my sleep issues, every night before I
sleep, I’m meant to ask her what she needs to tell me.”
My
mother thinks the whole thing is just so typical of her dead mother-in-law,
whom she never got on with. “She was such an attention seeker when she was
alive. Why am I not surprised that even when she’s dead, she’s still trying to hog the limelight! If you ever get to
speak to her, tell her I said so!”
Leave
it to Sharyn to put things in perspective. “Aiyoh, you, ah! Where got such
thing, one! You think dead people have nothing better to do, is it? I see the
way you eat dinner – big steak, big plate of rice, big cake, of course you
can’t sleep, what! You got indigestion, lah!”
Still,
I’m not taking any chances. Tonight, I’m sleeping with a rosary. And just in
case, I’ve also taken three antacid tablets.
2 comments:
Hi Jason!
Your blog has been my discovery of the month! I used to fork out $2 from my primary school lunch budget to buy 8 days, just to read your column at the back. I'm no longer in Singapore, and the content of that magazine has long lost its allure, but your writing still tickles my funny bone. Whoever prompted your move online should be given a medal.
Nicky
I echo Nicky's sentiment above. Three years out of Singapore and you are the only local writers I still read regularly.
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