The Wonders

I can’t sleep. Haven’t for days. (Hence the unfortunate slipper-sock incident). I lie in bed for hours, first waiting, then wriggling, pulling my left leg into my body, then my right, then left again. I swing my arm behind me resting it briefly (and painfully) on my shoulder blades before swinging it back again. Twister, anyone? I try balancing on my side, my back, my breasts. I wince -- breasts aren’t made for balancing. I squeeze my eyes shut, harder, harder. My alarm clock is staring at me. If I fall asleep right now, I can get five and a half hours … four … two …

Despite liberal use of various eye gels, cucumber creams, and goops not otherwise specified, the grey-blue patches under my eyes are beginning to bear a disturbing resemblance to the state of Montana. If this continues, I worry my face will soon amount to little more than a large bruise resting precariously atop my neck. This has to stop. People are beginning to notice. When asked, I shrug my shoulders and look suitably perplexed before writing it off to stress or too much ice cream. Then I smile gratefully, as I receive a sympathetic nod and a homily on the virtues of warm milk at bedtime.

But, truth is, I’m not stressed. And really, let’s be honest here; there’s no such thing as too much ice cream. All I’m suffering from at the moment is a particularly tenacious bout of the Wonders. As a little girl, it used to happen all the time. Nothing serious, or even entirely unpleasant; just a mild case of nerves mixed with no small amount of giddiness.

After hearing my first concert at the Hollywood Bowl, I was up all night wondering. I kept imagining myself on that stage, the second violinist in a famed string quartet, or the soloist with the LA Philharmonic, or, once, the fiddler in a mariachi band. Over and over and over again, I watched myself take the stage. I could hear my dress crinkle, feel my knees lock, smell the stage lights all trained on me as I bowed before an audience brought to its feet by my wondering.

In the sixth grade, I was up two nights in a row, wondering whether Brian Li would ask me to his seventh-grade banquet. And then two more nights once he’d asked, weighing my options: Li-Bennett, Bennett-Li, just Li, just Bennett.

But the more I grew up, the less I wondered. There were years I didn’t wonder at all. I was so busy finding a place to sleep, I didn’t have time to notice I was forgetting to dream. I suppose I have a lot of wondering to make up for. I wonder, though, if perhaps I couldn’t sleep a bit as well.