Memories of Night

The winter before I got pregnant with Finley I experienced a shift in my days and nights. I've always been prone to be a bit nocturnal. I don't require a lot of sleep to function, although I'm a lot nicer the more hours I have under my belt.

In these months, though, it was extreme. I woke up usually around midnight, right when my house was finally winding down. My family would slowly abandon their projects and give in to their warm beds, just as I finally emerged from my own.

That's when I would finally pour the coffee and get to work. I was a counter of stars, a student in the various degrees of darkness, a picky connoisseur of sunrises. In those months, words flowed from me like blood from a wound. I stumbled to catch them all, found my fingers cramped by morning from nearly eight hours of constant typing.

The world is quiet at night. The view from my back window showed the lights on the freeway slowly gap, then dim, then disappear. Cities all eventually fall asleep, usually around 4 a.m.

Neon lights look lonely at night. Few people want a taco for an early morning breakfast. But signs gleam on, cut through the darkness in chilling reminders of our dependence. I think the night makes people feel invincible... or uncomfortably vulnerable. Either way, no consumer products seem to fit in with the overwhelming cloak of night.

Winter presses on the edges of cities at night, even in the summer. These days, too, it seems that at any moment the snow will fall, coat everything, equalize it in white, silence us all, mute the world. That winter I watched the snow come down, safe and toasty in my living room.

Now I put Finley in our bed around 11. She snuggles up against me, and I write, wind down, drink hot chocolate, remember the times when I would only come out at night, like a sick little vampire. I sleep at night, now, for the most part, except for when I think it might snow.

Soon we'll skip out the door in bustled coats, our necks buried under colored scarves, just our round eyes peering from under our hats. Our blood will thicken--our bodies' natural responses, trying to fight the cold. The mercury will drop farther and farther...

Winter's just begun. And I'm beginning to miss my friend night.