Restless

I feel my dog rest her head on the edge of the bed at my back. I sigh and look up to check the time.

2:43 A.M.

My love is sleeping next to me and facing away, her breath slow and rhythmic like waves rolling gently against the sand.

My dog sets her head down again, harder this time, and lets out a soft, airy whimper. “All right, all right,” I whisper to her as I roll over and throw the blankets off. I haven’t really slept yet tonight—I’ve drifted and dozed and my mind has wandered into that strange place where everything and nothing makes sense, but I haven’t slipped into full unconsciousness.

I can feel my dog’s eyes on me as I pull on a pair of pyjama pants and a shirt in the dark. We pad out of the bedroom, my feet making soft thuds on the floor while hers click behind me. I flick the stairs light on and head down while she rushes by me. At the backdoor, I pull on my plaid, quilted coat. My dad always called them Haliburton dinner jackets, and I think about that every time I pull mine on. It’s funny the things that stick with you.

I open the door for the dog and the cool October air rushes around me and makes me shiver a little. I take a quick look into the backyard and decide that the moon is bright enough and that I don’t need to turn the outside light on. I like being able to go outside without using the light, because then I can look at the stars. She rushes into the yard while I step out and close the door as quietly as I can.

She sniffs and trots around in the near dark while I look up into the night sky. I locate the big dipper and then the few other constellations I recognize but don’t know the names of. In the distance there is the odd whoosh of a car or truck driving on the highway and I can hear the papery rustle of leaves still hanging onto their branches.

Streetlights dot the road every two-hundred feet and there is light pollution coming from the city, fifty kilometres or so to the south. I frown, thinking about all the stars and constellations I can’t see and wonder what it would be like to look up without being constantly reminded that we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that lighting every dark corner matters more than seeing the stars or the cool peace of night.

A car whooshes by on the road in front of the house and I marvel that, even at three in the morning, someone has somewhere to be. I live in the “country” or some version of it. There are lots of woods and rivers and plenty of farms around. But it’s still busy and loud at rush hour when the highway is busiest.

I wonder how far into the wilderness I’d have to go to hear nothing. Nothing but the sounds of the natural world, the only man-made sound being my own breath. I imagine it’s a pretty long way, and that there are fewer and fewer of those places left every day.

I let out a soft whistle between my teeth, and my dog comes to my side. “Ok,” I say, “back to bed.” We go inside and I take my coat off and hang it up while the dog watches me. We go back upstairs and I turn the light off and get back into bed. I can hear her flop down and sigh. The bed is warm compared to my chilly hands and feet and I think that a little fresh air and the renewed embrace of the blanket will finally whisk me off into a deep sleep.

But I’m mistaken, and twenty minutes later, I’m still awake. Wide awake, actually. I decide that I’m going to get up, have a cup of peppermint tea and read a little by the lamp, hoping that will get me to fall asleep when I lay back down. “Jesus Christ,” I say as I throw the blankets off again and get out of bed. I’m jealous of my partner, who is still sound asleep and dreaming.

I’ve been feeling like this for a few days now. It’s hard to describe it as anything other than restlessness. But it's not just restlessness. It’s like an itch. It feels like when you’re young and roll the windows in the car down and play the music loud and drive too fast. “Having a wild hare up your ass,” is what my dad called it when I was eighteen, and I guess that’s as good a metaphor as any.

He said it would go away once I got into my twenties and started making my way in the world. He was wrong—for me at least. It only dulled.

I turn on the range hood light, fill the electric kettle and set it to boil, the blue light glowing eerily against the wall. I think about the manufactured necessity of kettles that glow and warranties and the Instagram accounts of appliance manufacturers and little bleached tea bags that come in containers with plastic lids and why if life is more convenient that it’s ever been, why doesn’t it feel like it?

I imagine making tea in a more deliberate way, like filling a copper kettle and setting it on a cook stove by a kerosene lantern. I wonder if why I don’t do that and about what’s stopping me and about whether the sheer tactile experience would bring me peace, making me more contented and settled. I wonder if this enduring restlessness is a product of our current reality or something I have inside of me or both.

I open the cupboard and pull a mug down. Then I start to reach for the tea bags on the next shelf up when something catches my eye. It’s the bottle of scotch I’ve been working on for the last six months or so. I reach on my tippy-toes and pull the bottle down carefully by the neck, trying to remember the last time I’d had any. The water in the kettle begins to rumble as I watch the amber liquid in the bottle roll and glow in the soft light of the range hood.

“Fuck it,” I mutter to myself. I set the bottle down on the counter, turn the kettle off and put the mug back. I open another cupboard and grab a whisky glass. I pour myself a couple of ounces and go sit at the kitchen table. The dog wanders out of the bedroom, blinking wearily and wondering what I’m doing. “I’m all right, pup,” I whisper as she clicks over and flops down next to me, resting her head on her paws. I look down at her and she raises her head to me, the soft light reflecting in her brown eyes. “Sláinte,” I say, holding the glass up to her. Her ears perk and she tilts her head at me. I smile at her before taking a sip, savouring the burn that slides down my throat and into my belly while she lays her head back down.

I take another sip and think about my grandfather, whose nightly ritual was to sit at the kitchen table when it was cold or on the deck when it was warm and drink the driest beer he could find and smoke cigarettes. He rotated through a couple of brands, but when I was young, it was Labatt’s and DuMaurier. Sometimes he would listen to music or to the crickets and spring peepers or the geese on the lake in the fall. On the nights that I didn’t have school, I’d sometimes sit out there with him and he’d give me sips of his beer while telling me stories about when he was young and the adventures and trouble he got in or we’d talk about whatever common interests we had.

Sometimes, after I’d gone to bed, I’d get up to get a drink or use the washroom and he’d still be out there, sitting alone in the night, drinking like I am now. I used to wonder what he was thinking about, but never asked him.

What I’m thinking about now is being young, when you’re all potential instead of all limitations. When you can dream about the things you might be one day instead of having to face the things you aren’t. I remember being twenty-two and wondering who the Leafs were going to take in the draft when one day it hit me. The kids they’re drafting are younger than me. It’s funny how much growing up there is to do still in your twenties—I’d somehow never fully realized that my boyhood dream of being a Maple Leaf was never going to happen. I remember when the thought hit me, just sitting there, feeling stupid and a little embarrassed that that realization was just occurring to me.

But it made me think about all the other things I wanted to be at one time or another that never did and never would come to pass, like being a pilot or a lawyer or a rock star. It’s like I knew in my head but not in heart, and my heart had finally caught up.

I wish I could go back and sit in the backseat on a hot summer day with my sister, trying to eat an ice cream cone before it melts or tobogganing in wet snow pants, filled with those hopes and dreams again, thinking that the world lay within reach and all I had to do was reach out and grab my piece of it. When you’re that young, it doesn’t occur to you that if it was that easy, the adults in your life wouldn’t be living pay cheque to pay cheque or teetering on the edge of alcoholism or staying in relationships they shouldn’t be in. If it was as easy as snapping your fingers to make a better life for yourself, they would’ve snapped them a long time ago.

Then, when you get a little older, you get arrogant and convince yourself that it won’t be you, that you’ll be able to rise above and carve the life you want out of the stone of the world—that they may have fallen short or given up but you won’t.

There’s about a sip of scotch left and I’m watching the little legs run down the sides of the glass alone and in the middle of the night, living pay cheque to pay cheque and wondering how I got here, wishing I could just snap my fingers. I wonder if my grandfather was thinking about the same things I’m thinking about—about all the things he wanted and wished to do but would never be able to. I wonder if he was pouring over choice after choice and wondering when he’d slipped off track and into the life that he’d lived—if he thought about all the things he was and wished he could be.

I throw the last of the scotch back and consider having another, because it’s devastating how brutal life can be and it’s tempting to just lay down and let it swallow you up the way the stretched and blanketing shadows of twilight make yours indistinguishable.

I decide it’s better not to have anymore—I have to work in the morning and I’ll already be exhausted. I get up and got to the sink to rinse my glass out and think about all the jobs I’ve had over the years, always thinking that it was just temporary and how one day I’d make it into my “real” job, how there’s something I’m “supposed to be,” but how up to this point that hadn’t happened.

It’s cute and maybe a little trite, but when you’re young, you think life is about thriving, when it’s really about surviving. The best most people can hope for is just trying to strike a balance between finding something they can stomach and putting food on the table, and some aren’t even that lucky. Some just scrape along until they don’t have to scrape anymore.

I turn off the range hood light and feel a little guilty and ashamed for feeling so sorry for myself, when there are people out there whose lives are nothing but endless pain and suffering until they’re snuffed out. But, like Pete Seeger said, “To everything there is a season,” and what better time to reflect on the choices or circumstances that got you to where you are but in the middle of the night where the only sound outside of your thoughts is the ticking of the kitchen clock.

I slip back into the bedroom and slide back under the covers, warmed and softened by the glass of scotch. The dog follows me and jumps up onto the foot of the bed, where she curls up at our feet. I wrap my warmed hands around my love and kiss the back of her head—carefully, so I don’t disturb her.

I can feel sleep creeping up on me; I’ve quieted the restlessness enough to drift off. The window is cracked and the rustling leaves underscore the rise and fall of my love’s breathing against my chest and I can feel myself sinking into the rhythm of sleep.