...for a long winter's nap is the line from Clement Moore's holiday poem my wife and kids quote to me in jest now, yet I find nothing stodgy or frumpy about wearing a nightcap to bed. It's a linen nightcap I made by hand several years ago to wear at reenactment events when the evening air would become frosty - I hate when my head gets cold! It also served as a wonderful insect screen when the nights weren't so cold but they were laden with the buzzing sounds of mosquitos. It isn't so much my age that I wear it now, nor the fact that my mind has always been tuned to a 19th century frequency and I like the style; it's honestly a fan...Vornado to be exact. For the years we've been married, my wife and I fall to sleep with the sounds and (in her case) the breezes from a fan.
But I've never been a fan of drafts, breezes, or hot breath blowing around my head and face as I try to fall to sleep; no, it's that exact interference that, in my opinion, leads to bad dreams and an even worse time trying to wake in the morning. So I've taken to wearing a nightcap while the weather's been cool and everything else save my head is securely tucked under crisp sheets, woolen blankets, and a down comforter on these winter nights.
Indeed I've discovered something about wearing a nightcap - something that save only a few nightcap-donners would know. I fall to sleep more quickly (probably the lack of breeze instrusion), sleep more soundly, and my dreams...heavens, since wearing the nightcap I've been having multi-chaptered dreams full of vivid colors with story lines of which when I wake I readily remember large moments. Is it the nightcap, or am I just in a period of better sleeping?
My usual night is a wrestling match of random thoughts for at least twenty minutes or until my mind is simply pinned by exhaustion. With the nightcap, it's as if the world, like the obstinate mosquito, is blocked and I can peacefully and quickly "settle in" to a warm, less breezy, night of sleep.
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