Lullabys for grown-up children

I'm a grown woman.

You'd think by now, after years of my husband going off on business trips, and my own seventeen summertime flights from Hades, that I would be able to sleep in a house or other dwelling by myself without nervousness.  However, the awful truth is, I'm scared to be alone at night.  It's not the reason I got married, but it's definitely a perk.  (The real reason I got married was to be able to tell my left hand from my right.)

In the earlier years of our marriage, if the Resident Fan Boy was away, I'd tune the television or radio to a news format, and leave it playing in the living room.  If I stirred to wakefulness, it was like the RFB was watching something before going to bed.

After children, this became less feasible, so I'd play a radio softly in the bedroom.  It meant not sleeping as deeply as I'd like, but it got me through the night.

Later, when troubled by occasional insomnia when the RFB was home, I tried earbuds with music, but the RFB could hear the music, and the earbuds were not comfortable anyway.

In the past year or so, they've come up with sleep-bars.  You tuck them under your pillow and use the BlueTooth function to choose what you hear.  My particular sleep-bar is called Sonisleep, and they also sent a link via email for ten sound-scapes, which include lapping waves, birdsong, waterfalls, quiet city traffic, and white noise.  They run for thirty minutes and when they end, the sleep-bar switches off.  

I also designed a "Sleep" playlist on Spotify, comprised of my favourite songs and instrumentals that remind me of night, or are connected with happy memories.  I can use the timer function for an automatic turn-off after 30 minutes.

It took a month or so of experimentation, during which I didn't tell the RFB of my purchase, because I wanted to see if the claim that the sounds Sonisleep makes cannot be heard by your bed partner are actually true.

During the month, I discovered three things that surprised me; 1) my sleep playlist actually slows my descent into sleep, because I want to listen to the music;  2) when I had to sleep in the living room during the four nights that the RFB was recovering from COVID last summer, I played the sleep playlist all night, because I found the living room, which is steps away from our bedroom, spooky and lonely.

And the third thing?  My favourite soundscape turns out to be "Heavy Rain and Thunder".  It's quite loud, but makes me feel cozy, and makes my pillow into a thundercloud.  I keep thinking of that scene in Fantasia when Zeus, tired of throwing thunderbolt, rolls himself into the clouds, like a man pulling an eiderdown about him, to go to sleep.  Maybe I should add the final movement of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony to my Sleep playlist.

Oh, and the Resident Fan Boy tells me he doesn't hear a thing.