Meet our writers

Win $1,000







Reflections January 2016

Puttin' on the Gritz

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep ...

By Cappy Hall Rearick

Reading in bed has been a nocturnal habit of mine since the day I learned to make sense out of sentences. When Mama threw away my pacifier, I latched onto a soon-to-become dog-eared Golden Book, The Pokey Little Puppy. She would read it aloud until I fell asleep so substituting a book for a pacifier became a lifelong habit.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray my soul a book to take. I wouldn't want to take along just any old book. I'd want it to be one with an ending strong enough to stop my ticker for all time. The book would have to tell a story so compelling that I wouldn't want to put it down until reading the last page, especially if I knew I was about to journey to the great beyond. I'd wait to see the words, "The End," at which point I'd close the book and do a bad imitation of Porky Pig saying, "Ebity ebity ... that's All, Folks!

Reading in bed has been a nocturnal habit of mine since the day I learned to make sense out of sentences. When Mama threw away my pacifier, I latched onto a soon-to-become dog-eared Golden Book, The Pokey Little Puppy. She would read it aloud until I fell asleep so substituting a book for a pacifier became a lifelong habit. When I was younger, I could read until two or three o'clock in the morning and still awaken at seven fully charged and ready to take on a busy schedule. Since age began to creep up on me, however, I consider it a major achievement to knock out two or three chapters before fading into the abyss of sleep.

Many of my friends, especially the After-Fifty bunch, have developed sleep issues over the years. They often complain to me that they either cannot get to sleep or they wake up in the middle of the night and find it impossible to get back to sleep. They slip out of bed and stumble around in the dark so as not to disturb the one snoring next to them. You know the one I mean: he always makes it to Slumberland in record time. No doubt there have been moments with strong desires to commit murder in such cases, but on the advice of counsel, I respectively take the Fifth.

I am not an insomniac, but if I were and if I did not keep a tall stack of books on my bedside table awaiting my nocturnal pacification, I might choose to grab my Bible and open it to the book of Genesis where the history of mankind has been duly documented. Adam begat Seth, who begat Enos, who begat Cainan, and on and on in an exhaustive account of who gave birth to whom and who ended up being kin to whom. If I found myself fighting insomnia, and if reading the long list of begats failed to put me in a coma, somebody should just shoot me.

But I'd rather meet my maker after finishing a good novel. I would willingly exchange my earthly bed for an eternal four-poster after reading anything written by Nora Ephron. With her humorous words floating just outside the brink of my brain, how could I not go happily to that Big Humor Writer's Conference in the Sky?

I could also be content to make my exit holding onto Rick Bragg's words. I'm Southern to the bone, but I pray I won't be going down to that other place that's even hotter than the Deep South I love. I'm okay making the trip way up North while hanging onto words from a good ol' boy. I could so drift off to Forever Land with Bragg's sentences rebounding on the walls of my mind.

"My people tell their stories of vast red fields and bitter turnip greens and harsh white whiskey like they are rocking in some invisible chair, smooth and easy even in the terrible parts, because the past has already done its worst. The joys of this Southern life, we polish like old silver. If thoughts more precious to any Southerner have ever been written, I have yet to read them.”

At this point in my life today, I have no plans to read myself into the Big Sleep, but one of these nights I suspect I'll finally climb Jacob's Ladder with the words of Nora Ephron, Flannery O'Connor or Eudora Welty giving me the boost I will likely need. I hope to arrive grinning like the humorist I try to be and holding a much loved, dog-eared Golden Book in my hands.

"Hey," I'll say to my three treasured muses. "Have y'all read, The Pokey Little Puppy?"

 

Meet Cappy