By Nan Peacocke
For Coastal Senior

Shakespeare memorably defined sleep for us as knitting the raveled sleeve of care. No one has ever said it better, in my opinion. However, I've always had trouble with that word "raveled."

Seemed to me, it should be unraveled - but I looked it up in the dictionary and raveled actually means unraveled, so I won't lose any more sleep over that seeming conflict.

Such was my obviously sleep-deprived mindset when I called the panel of sleep experts put together by a local television station. My sleep pattern has changed since my youth and this panel seemed a chance for me to find out if there were truth in the observation.

Bingo! I finally got through and a nice feminine voice tolerated my ignorance politely and gave me a basic and very superficial education on the subject of sleep. According to her, here are the basics as interpreted by me:

· As we age, we require less sleep than when we were younger because young people have to be rejuvenated. That answer brought questions to mind like "And we don't?" and "What effect might it have if we could get as much sleep as we did when we were younger?" But I decided against presenting myself as the ungrateful, smart aleck.

· There is a great deal of variation in the amount of sleep needed by individuals, regardless of age, and this is always a factor in determining "normal/sufficient amount of sleep."

· Nothing (at least sleep related) is wrong with people like me who find, for the first time in their life, they "nod off" a bit in the afternoon. Naps are fine as long as they don't last an hour or more, interfere with your ability to fall asleep at your usual time, or come as a result of not getting quality or quantity of sleep at night.

· I asked about the nights I wake up about every two hours, by the clock. Is that a sign of something? The nice voice wanted to know if I woke up because I was snoring, had flailing of my legs, needed to use the bathroom or had stopped breathing?

· denied any knowledge of such, only admitting to the fact that sometimes I do go to the bathroom because what else is there to do at those hours? Her response was that the cause might be significant but alone there was no significance to waking every two or so hours.

Of course, the question of what you were doing immediately before waking is not always an easy one to answer. That answer is often dependent on whether you sleep alone or not. Many elders do sleep alone and so wouldn't be as aware of snoring, for example.

I'm totally unaware of my snoring unless I'm visiting my son and his family. There I am usually banished to the far reaches because I snore. One grandson tells me I sound like a chain saw and the younger one flatly refuses to let me sleep in the spare bed in his room because of it.

Fortunately, I'm not sensitive and besides, grandparents always have that secret weapon, "My Will" - which, by the way, doesn't phase any of my offspring.

When we were evacuated on that joy ride to Atlanta for Hurricane Floyd, a sister and I went to my son's. Although we left in the morning, we didn't arrive until about midnight - long after everyone was asleep. The door was left open for us and we were left a note assigning us to be roommates. The next morning, they informed us, we were snoring in stereo - often in perfect harmony. But, obviously, neither of us disturbed the other's sleep. So I do snore and if I'm very tired sometimes I wake myself up with a resonating snore of gusto. That is not the case when I wake at odd hours in the night.

Signs of flailing of legs would be disturbed covers and so I think that can be detected. Not breathing is a toughie, but if that is the case, thank goodness it wakes one up. All humor aside, the good news is that there are places called sleep labs where you spend the night under monitors, human and otherwise. There it is easier to pinpoint the cause of the sleep (or more correctly...waking) problem.

My editor told me to be sure to find out why he wakes at 5 a.m. no matter when he goes to bed. I asked that question, which on top of my others must have made me sound like a hopeless case of sleep pathology. The response brought us back full cycle to: As one ages one needs less sleep and patterns vary tremendously. Only if interfering with your life or making your waking life difficult, does a sleep pattern become classified as abnormal.

Although I find lying in bed awake a miserable experience, apparently there is no quick fix. That fact does make me look back on my excessive sack time as a youth with more pride and pleasure. Had I known about this less sleep thing in my youth, dare say I would have enjoyed more morning sleep when I could, except that it would seriously interfere with getting the bills paid.

Since we seem doomed to sleep less, the only alternative I can think of is to wake the rest of the people in our world earlier. That's probably why they made that silly "9 p.m. to 9 a.m.: Don't Call" rule. Society ostracizes you if you break that rule, obviously the result of a conspiracy by sleepy-headed youths.

Nan Peacocke spends many nights tossing and turning at her home in Savannah, from which she writes and ages with grace.