I don’t want you to get the wrong impression here, but the Ramadan schedule can get to be very grim and tedious. I also think this second of the three ten day sections is the most tedious. I already said what a challenge it is to take all of my sustenance in the dark with the suhur before dawn (which is before sunrise mind you) and then iftar at sunset followed by prayer and then a meal.
I’m really tired at this point of having my sleep so disrupted. Normally, I’m in bed from 9-5, or maybe 10-5 in the summer. Since I started having children 35 years ago I have not slept for 8 hours a night, but at least I can give myself permission to be in the bed early cause I’m brain dead. And then I’m pretty fanatical about fajr prayer. This is not a boast. Actually, because of my sporadic sleep pattern, fajr prayer separates the previous day from the new. It acts as a marker for that “today is the first day of the rest of your life” sorta thing. I tend to sleep in 2 or 3 hour snippets.
What characterizes a good night for me is when I get at least two of these at three hours with nothing but the time it takes to turn over and check the read out dial of the clock in between. If I have to get up and pee, well that would be a good time too. But no intellectual self-conversation: no, “how to save the world in a one hundred day blog”; no, where did I put that document, no, what was I needed to do for my daughter thoughts — then I’m good. That’s a good night.
Since retirement I have given myself permission not to have good nights and so if I get up to read a book watch the second half of a movie already playing (but NO technology, no internet: that’s a endless tunnel), then I return for another 2-3 hour snippet, I am no longer upset by this. I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve given the tweet or the status update: “I think 8 hours of sleep is something someone dreamed up.” I know people who say they get 8 as a minimum, and can go as long as 10-12. I take this as hear-say. Not that I think they’re lying, I just cannot imagine what that must be like!
When I’m not fasting I love to spend the night with my grandson, because I can pretend that is why I am awake. He sleeps all night but not without a human contact somewhere in there once or twice. As long as we cuddle him and give him the pacifier he’s good ’til morning. I can’t take him for the night with the fast because he’s at the age where he gets to decide the clock and unfortunately he might just compete with the divine mandate for getting up in a timely fashion for us suhur diehards. It would just not work if he was up for a cuddle at 3:45 and then I had to follow the S.O.S. like half an hour 45 minutes later. Something would give.
I feel for young parents, but as I have five children, I don’t feel that much. I did my stint. Right now I feel for old people, because that is my new classification. It is not so much a universal regarding sleep, that I feel, but every time I go to the mosque, I eyeball those women who use chairs to assist in the prayer, and I feel the pain of my arthritis and KNOW I will be there soon myself. I can stand for those marathon tarawih rakat, for now. But some of the ladies start at a stand and part of the way through take a seat. It’s a long time to be on one’s own legs when one’s legs are not that strong any more.
I can bow from the middle; no one seems to have problems with that. I can get down into the full prostration or sajdah (which for me is the essence of the performance) but I see that some cannot. Right now, I am having trouble with sitting back. The bend in the knee is pretty telltale where my worst arthritis is. And, unlike my younger, lither days, I struggle to get back up into the standing position and I see that is a major challenge for the ladies with chairs. I worry about the 3.5 miles that I must walk and run at the hajj between Safa and Marwa, as did Hajar those many years ago. I used to walk for 4 miles in the morning but it is the combination walk/run that might be a challenge. Well, I don’t need to think too much about that right now. I’m just sick of losing what little bit of broken sleep I used to get.
By the time I return from tarawih and settle in it is already 11:30. There are no 2 snippets of 3 hours no matter how I slice it, before the alarm sings the adhan at 4:30. Plus, I’m tired of sleeping with food on my stomach. It hurts sometimes, especially that “nap” I take after fajr. I read the Qur’an for about 45 minutes to an hour and then turn out the light. I love the Qur’an reading and I love it at that time, funny enough. But I don’t get enough sleep unless I take a few zz’s then and it is not with heavy heart it is with heavy stomach.
I’m not having the ideal relationship with my physical being this month, and I might as well be frank about it. I’ve long ago hit the zone for the day: without additions to my blood sugar. There are so many maniac advantages there. I think clearer, I think faster. I think more creatively. Some brilliant ideas have come to me in Ramadan these past four decades, especially when night time duty to my children was out of the way. Remember what I said about make up days for women and nursing mothers? I think we do more than our share of keeping the family institution going, thank you very much and a few days off from fasting is not the bee’s knees.
When Ramadan is over I will not permit a single morsel of food to pass my lips after a certain hour in the evening for quite a spell. Just to make up for these night-only consumption days. I hate it really. My norm is two meals a day and the second one is like a heavy late lunch. I’m not even a dinner person let alone supper and I have to adjust when I am with my friends abroad, because folks love that late meal together.
So yesterday I was lazy, as far as extra ritual goes. I just decided to go to bed earlier rather than to go to the mosque. And I try to sleep until the beautiful CD (I was given for advising on a documentary about the Prophet Muhammad) plays the adhan. Still when it sounded this morning, I thought, I don’t want to get up! To say nothing of a planned Skype appointment with some late night professor from Australia right after my little nap. I could just as well have slept on and on, I thought. But then, I also hate sleeping in the day, so it’s a catch-22. I had such a wonderful conversation with the professor that I was happy to be on my way and back to blogging, even though this is not one of my best days.
That’s why I want people to realize that there is an extreme measure of discipline in this particular ritual; maybe even more than the days-long hajj with all its rigor and space, let alone 3 million people. I still think it will take on an unexpected momentum because it is once in a life time (at least for me). Or maybe I still hope that will be the case.
I will redeem myself this day, Friday, yaum al-jumu’ah, I hope, by getting done with this and getting ready to go to jumu’ah prayer at my favorite mosque. I think I’m just lonely a bit, since no one in my household is fasting and those nights with my grandson are off. I don’t get enough cuddling. And whoever said writing a blog was like having a friend, was surely wrong. I fast because I believe; I blog because I think. In both there is some sacrifice and some reward. Tomorrow I want to write about the ideas about forgiveness in Islam. And so to preempt it: I ask your forgiveness for being neither witty, insightful, nor informative. It’s another day and this blog is done.
