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It’s not really insomnia if I roll out of bed at 5:51 a.m., even if I haven’t slept much, even if I want to throttle the neighbor’s rooster whose biological imperative drives him to begin crowing at 4 a.m. and continue into the afternoon. But the rooster’s not the primary impediment to sleep – that would be the ongoing pain in my shoulder or maybe the wine I drank celebrating a friend’s visit or perhaps the inability to sleep relates to the anxiety that nightly condenses in my brain.

Some things help. For years I tossed a couple Tylenol PMs down my throat, but a person can only imbibe so many pharmaceuticals before growing weary. I attempt less medicinal solutions, read before bed instead of watching a movie. The shift in attention from screen to page helps. At the very least, I fall asleep absorbed in someone else’s life. Like many similarly aged ladyfriends, I’ve switched from red wine to white – and soon, I fear, will abandon wine altogether for the promise of “Golden Slumber” tea. (The next step, clearly, being wheeled into a home to await physical death as all the pleasures of life will have had to be denied.)

The best advice I’ve encountered regarding insomnia came from the pages of Beth Lisick’s Helping Me Help Myself and involves rewinding through your day. I lie in bed, left arm tucked under the pillow, curled into a semi-fetal position, a foot sticking out from under the covers, and think backwards about all I did during the day. Typically, I’ll fall back asleep before I get to the part where I woke up. But sometimes my mind wanders too much and I find myself yanked sideways, worrying about the children, the bills, work, the future.

I wish that damn rooster would shut up.

When the clock notes we’ve passed the 5 a.m. mark, I figure I might as well get up. Downstairs the cats mew for food, so I feed them, at least the three that are around. I’m afraid to leave food in an untended bowl lest the other cats chow down before the fourth arrives. Too many cats. They all have their fine qualities, but really – too many cats. Two of them are family cats and the other two belong to my older daughter, who has left them here while she sorts out her life hither and yon. She’ll be back soon, then leave again, maybe taking the cats with her, maybe sending for them later. Keeping them here is truly only a small inconvenience, I remind myself, and an easy way to help her out. The kitten, a tuxedo’d thing as big as the full-grown felines, curls up on the couch, sated.

I stir turmeric and honey together, pour boiling water overtop, mix in soy milk. This is supposed to help the inflammation in my shoulder, as is the arnica, the cannabis tincture, the cannabis salve. Some combination of these healing efforts has reduced the pain from the tear-inducing waves of a few weeks ago, but I found myself tying my flannel into a sling Sunday while walking on the beach, the weight of my arm being enough to trigger more ache than I could ignore. I wonder if I’ll ever surf again. The past few days have offered small, user-friendly waves under plenty of sunshine and no wind of note. I should have tried. But I’m afraid. Scared I’ll hurt myself further, concerned my attempts to push off my board will radiate awkwardness, leave me stumbling, be an exercise in embarrassment. I am unsure which is worse: the sadness of not paddling out or the heartache of paddling into failure. (Insert surf-cliché as life metaphor: Is it better to have gone for the wave and wiped out than to never have surfed at all?)

So, yes. Poor me. Turmeric downed, I wait for the Earl Grey Creme to steep. The sky glows lavender. I page through a book I ordered special from Northtown a few weeks ago. Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers. It’s an older book, published in 2001, an anthology curated by the editors of Hip Mama magazine and foreworded by Dan Savage. I had a copy once, but apparently loaned it out at some point and my shelves haven’t seen the book since. I wanted another copy because I’m published in it, the only book I’m published in so far – not counting the surf guide that ganked an excerpt from my Arcata Eye report on witnessing a shark attack – and I have no copy of the essay within.

My tea steeps and I flip to my chapter. I laugh at how much I sound like me. Fourteen years has not changed my habit of writing action, action and action. I do this and then I do that and then I do another thing, hoping the reader gleans from these verbs all that is too important to leave to mere adjectives. I’m pleased to still be pleased. To have had one essay in an independent anthology nearly a decade-and-a-half ago is hardly proof that I’m destined to be a writer, but that triumph affirmed my path at a time when my roles as wife, mother, student, writer sometimes conflicted badly, often left me unsure which way to go.

The book garnered only mixed reviews. Publisher’s Weekly opined “this collection of essays by Gen-X writers proves that motherhood is much the same no matter what generation one is from.” But that same review also said, “Among the exceptions is ‘Learning to Surf,’ in which Jennifer Savage thoughtfully recounts her journey from being 22-year-old single mom and punk rocker to a married mother of three learning to surf.” That line, for better or worse, has sustained me through times of wondering what the hell I think I’m doing with all these words and stuff.

Encouragement can make all the difference in what one pursues.

(I should note, too, that I met my friend and Humboldt native Peri Escarda through Breeder. The Amazon review says of her essay, “And we can all be grateful to Peri Escarda for helping us find the ‘Perfect Name’ to offer a daughter when she points between her legs and asks, ‘What’s dat?'”)

I write.