Charlotte Latvala: Sleeplessness comes with age

Here’s a fun fact about getting older.

You wake up at completely random times during the night! For no reason! Your brain suddenly forgets everything it learned about how to sleep, back when you were a child. Those days of eight, seven, even six hours of peaceful, uninterrupted sleep are long gone.

(Sorry to burst the bubble of any young parents out there. But you have several more waves of sleeplessness coming. Hello fretful teen years, and oh — hello empty nest and the daggers of nighttime worry! So pleased to meet you!)

But back to the random waking. There is no reason for it; there’s no pattern to it. It’s like a snoozy game of Russian Roulette, every 24 hours.

You hit the hay as you usually do, around 10 p.m., and drift off to dreamland. Behold — you awaken to the sound of a loud snore (often your own) and reach for your phone to check the time.

And what to your squinting, bleary eyes should appear? Who knows? Maybe it’s 1:30 a.m. Maybe 3 a.m. Then the guessing game begins. Will it be one of those nights when you get up to use the bathroom and then effortlessly glide back into your dream state?

Or will it be two hours of worry and cold sweats and wondering if any of your out-of-state kids are in trouble, and whatever happened to Eric Carmen, and do dryer sheets really cause fires?

This morning, for me, the cold bell of wakefulness struck at 4 a.m.

I tossed and turned and thought: It’s too early to get up. And yet, I don’t feel tired enough to go back to sleep.

I wasted two hours rearranging myself in the bed, flipping over and over again, finally listening to the birds break into song just outside the window and the cat start to yowl for his breakfast. All the time alternating between: “I’m so close to sleep. I just need to give it a minute” and “I may as well get up now and get a jump start on the day.”

I got up. I told myself (as I always do): “You can nap later.” (This is an outright lie.)

It’s not how I imagined late middle age.

Remember those ads for face cream some years back — the ones that said something like “I’m not going to grow old gracefully. I’m going to fight it every step of the way”? and featured a clear-skinned model who appeared to be 30, 31 tops?

At the time (I was in my idealistic twenties and believed I actually had some control over my life) I thought: That’s a terrible point of view. Why, I’ll happily grow old gracefully. I’ll age like a fine wine or a classic Jaguar or Catherine Deneuve. I’ll embrace 60 with wry wisdom and classy dignity.

Sweet, simple, 26-year-old me. I had no idea I’d be trying to do it on four hours of sleep.

Charlotte is a columnist for The Times. You can reach her at charlottelatvala@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Latvala: Sleeplessness comes with age