In the Still of the Night

I have returned from a trip to see my son. In some ways I wished I had never left. Because when you come home everything is pushed up on the calendar and you no longer have weeks in which to accomplish them. You have days, sometimes hours. And they are things you meant to do earlier. They are things you need to have done, in a timely fashion. But time is not and probably never will be your friend. And you face these things in the dead of night, while everyone else is blissfully snoring in their beds.

When the world is in slumber, I should be sleeping. But I'm making a list, then a sub list, then an even smaller sub list of what needs to be accomplished. I do not resent going to see my son. I resent the mess when I come home. And it seems night-time is the time to think about it. And wonder about what would happen if I missed this deadline or that on the horizon.

What is it about the night? I've spent a goodly portion of them sitting or half-reclining on the couch in the living room staring at the screen of the laptop or the iPad. Playing endless games of solitaire. Reading stupid books that I haven't really enjoyed just to get bored enough to fall off to sleep. When I was pregnant with my children, night was the time I paced the floors and wondered what kind of crazy person I was bringing a child into the world such as it is (or was about 30 years ago). And there are those nights when it might as well be the middle of the afternoon for how un-sleepy I have felt. Time drags when you can't sleep. I don't care what Einstein said, light at night slows down and there is no way an hour is just an hour.

I have spent a significant portion of nights finishing up really good books that I couldn't put down. Those are the nights when I finally stumble upstairs, bleary eyed but content that I figured out the plot before actually finishing the book.  There were occasionally books that freaked me out at night. When the boogey man definitely is waiting at the top of the stairs after I have turned off the lights to go up to the bedroom. A couple of them disconcerted me so much that sleeping never came until the dawn. I try to avoid them as I'm not pleasant when I don't get my 7 hours. With no sleep at all? Well, it's just not a good thing, trust me.

I've had more regrets, more sobering thoughts, more depression than at any other time when this part of the world is sleeping. I seem to be able to  enlarge and extrapolate troubles in the "dark watches". I become convinced that certain problems will never sort themselves out or certain unpleasantness will inevitably happen when faced with endless darkness (or at least about 10 hours of it). Sunlight seems to make me more rational. Starlight makes me a little crazy. I believe in magic more at night. I believe the impossible can and most likely does happen then. And when the sun comes up and proves me wrong, I shake my head at my foolishness until the sun goes down again and I wander the dark, looking for some light.