Insomnia, Please

I just discovered that I like waking up at 3:00Am, still stressing about work, and then not being able to go back to sleep.  

Because at 3:30, when you finally give up and admit that you can never get back to sleep, you roll out of bed into this wonderfully peaceful world where no one is pulling you in the direction of their own needs.

I figured I'd check on my fantasy football team, get bored, and perhaps get tired again, but instead had a weird thought that I wanted to hear the old song "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto.  

Wow.  So there is also a time machine at this hour of the morning.

Suddenly it's me and Linda and Brenda in the backseat of the old DeSoto, as mom and dad haul us cross country to New Mexico, following the real route 66 in 1963.  Canvas water bag hanging from the side-view mirror, I remember Connie Francis' "Never on Sunday" and Percy Faith's "Theme from Summerplace" and Santo and Johnny's "Sleepwalk".

And I've listened to them all this morning.  I've been transported, and I'm sentimental and weepy and nostalgic and even uplifted.  I want to come here more often.  I want to remember when strangers weren't mean and petty, and when the country was bountiful with variety and adventure rather than this insipid sameness that has crawled across the face of our land. 

I want to see Linda's smile and smell Brenda's hair.  I want to see mom and dad looking like kids again.  I want to believe the world is good again, even if when I believed it the first time it was just through the rosie-colored glasses of an irrepressibly curious and optimistic child.