Carol’s Column

Making a mother out of Leonardo

Leonardo da Vinci was a remarkable man. Not only because he painted the priceless Mona Lisa, but because of his sleep routine. He spurned normal sleeping patterns and established his own by napping for 15 minutes every four hours, which gave him an equivalent of 90 minutes' sleep every 24 hours.

This meant that the creative Leonardo was able to spend 22½ hours a day being productive.

I believe that each and every mother is an unrecognised Leonardo da Vinci clone. Da Vincidom is thrust upon mothers the moment a new-born infant wailingly pops from his or her uterine sanctuary. Pathetic and bleating, that tiny wail pierces every mother's heart and from that day on you become a Leonardo da Vinci, so to speak.

Gone are long, unbroken, restful nights in bed, the hours of deep sleep in which your brain cells and other parts replenish their strength. That erstwhile precious time is replaced by constant wakefulness, and if you're lucky you might get the odd 15 minutes of shut-eye occasionally.

Singing lullabies

As children grow older, a mother's sleep decreases. Endless nights of nappy-changing and burping windy innards give way to hours of story-telling and lullaby-singing, until suddenly your child is 15 and you can't sleep because he or she is out with a friend and you're wondering what they're doing and where they are.

Once, on July 8, 1983, I had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep when I was booked into hospital overnight to have my tonsils castrated. But that was a unique occasion.

For many years

I believed the difference between male and female was biological. It's not true. The differences are more basic and have to do with sleep patterns.

Men are able to sleep through everything at all times whereas women have built-in alarms which keep them constantly alert. Da Vincidom is unique to women and is triggered off by the act of birth.

Snoring is also a sex-related activity. An interesting study by Dr Percy Huggle of Stanford, USA, reveals that snoring is far more prevalent among men than women. Ninety-seven percent of men snore compared with 3 percent of women, and Dr Huggle suggests snoring has two functions. Firstly, it is soporific in that it puts the perpetrator to sleep; secondly, it is a defence mechanism designed to block out all other sounds. Snorers are known to sleep more deeply than anyone around them.

Too busy to paint

To get back to Leonardo da Vinci. He was fortunate in being born a man, for had he been a woman he would never have had time to paint. He would have been busy doing the ballet, soccer, swimming, cricket and gym lift-schemes. He would have spent mornings in clinics weighing babies, in tuck-shops selling hamburgers and hotdogs to kids. Afternoons at the orthodontist having his childrens' jaws restructured and nights at Std 6, 7, 8, 9 and matric concerts.

Instead of chatting to Mona Lisa as he sketched away, he would have been in the kitchen making salami and pickled cucumber sandwiches for school lunches. Of course, a world without the Mona Lisa would have been poorer.

But then, this morning, while dusting the piano, I saw the picture of my four gap-toothed children smiling at me. Like Leonardo, I and every other mother have created our own masterpieces. They may not hang in the Louvre, but they are priceless.

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