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Three Dog Night

The man I sleep with never has trouble falling asleep at night. If there's one thing he knows how to do (other than eat), it's sleep. He closes his eyes and he's out. He can wake up in an instant — if the phone rings or someone comes to the door — and then fall back to sleep just as fast. Sleeping for him is as natural, and seemingly as easy, as breathing.

As soon as I get into bed at night, he is there, letting me know that if I'm going to sleep, he will, too. I lift him into bed (the bed is a little high, and he doesn't like the steps I bought him), he finds a comfortable position, and that's it. He snores. I toss and turn. It's a dog's life.

Irving Estrich is actually the youngest of my three dogs, an 11-month-old very handsome pug. Sometimes his older sisters, Judy Jarvis Estrich (lab) and Molly Emily Estrich (cockapoo), join us, but because Irving is an alpha male, my two girls, who used to sleep with me all the time, mostly prefer to sleep with their human brother or sister in their Irving-less beds, or on the couch. Often, they wander around the house in the night. Not Irving. Once he gets into bed, that's where he stays until I lift him out for breakfast in the morning. He is the champion sleeper in the house.

I am in awe. If only I could take a lesson.

When Irving gets into bed, he doesn't worry about what he did wrong today; he doesn't worry about whether he ate too many biscuits, or had an accident in the media room, or whether I'll be mad at him for eating the stuffing out of a new toy. He doesn't worry about tomorrow's grooming or the tests at the vet.

No woulda, shoulda, couldas. It's bedtime, so he goes to sleep. What's so hard about that?

My old friend Madeleine Albright once told me that the secret to survival as Secretary of State was being able to fall asleep on a dime — even for just 20 minutes in the backseat of a car, if that's what she had. You sleep when you can, she told me, and you don't lose sleep worrying about how little time you have to sleep, how soon you have to get up or what you have to do when you do. The more you think, the less you sleep.

Irving Estrich gets that. I know it, which is different from being able to do it.

A rash of new studies have come out recently finding that Americans don't sleep long enough or well enough. How not shocking! When I watch Irving, it is clear to me that I don't know the first thing about sleeping. Maybe I was born knowing it and forgot, although my memories of the excruciating pain of letting my children cry as I reread Dr. Ferber on putting babies to sleep for the hundredth time suggest that learning to comfort yourself, and to let go, is indeed something we humans aren't necessarily born knowing.

With little kids, you learn to sleep with half an ear open to hear their crying; with big kids, you have big things to worry about. Being a parent is about learning not to sleep, which is not a good thing, since, in my experience, being overtired does not make you better at anything. Even sleeping.

I don't like warm milk. Ambien makes me tired in the morning. The natural stuff doesn't work. So I snuggle up with Irving and try to think about not thinking. I'm supposed to be smarter than he is. Watching the two of us at night suggests otherwise.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.