Night: A Memory

Before I fall asleep each night, I close my eyes and watch a small tendril of light extend from me into everything. It flows forward like a brook into the Now, moves like a soft wisp of smoke into the Great Beyond. Beneath it is where everything grows. This is what I see between sleeping and waking. I do not count backwards. There are no sheep. Only a faint celestial shimmering twist held in space before me asking me to do nothing other than be with it.

The light lulls me into a liminal place where sometimes I meet memories, faces of people I do not recognize, dreamlike scenes, or the simply: the dark.

This time, a memory.

It is the middle of the night and I am nursing twins for the third time. They are growing. My body provides their food. I know enough not to let blue light enter my eyes, so I keep the room dark and listen to the world hum around me. Moonlight slants along the floor through a slit in the white curtains and lands on our dog’s outstretched paw. It twitches—he is dreaming. There is a tether of time that connects us, of knowing, of dreaming and waking. I feel my own heartbeat; my daughters make noises as they drink. They hold hands. In the dark of my quiet old house, I wonder—how am I able to be so awake, so alive, so present even in the face of this difficulty? This sleeplessness?

Where does my lightness come from?

A leaf of my prayer plant unfurls and scratches the ceiling: an answer. The moon speaks next, casting its shadow light on the leaf of a monstera I propagated just months ago. For the first time, I recognize the shape of the leaves. I am leaking, surrounded by hearts. The moon glow moves to reveal a sage-colored swirl stretch out and touch the roof. The scratching is there, a leaf whispering to me in an honest acknowledgement of my attention. The prayer plant scratches the roofline, blooming in the darkness. This is like a portal into all the things I know: the way I could hear only the consonant sounds of the radio in my mind as a kid, or how ticking clocks would get louder as I fell asleep threatening to keep me awake until I softly acknowledged through my fear that they were there, a vibrational metronome beneath all life.

As the girls drink, they hold hands like an illuminated swatch; the very fabric of life rests in my lap. My feet reach into eternity and I grab a frayed edge as the roofline begins to quietly unzip itself, shingle by shingle. The oak tree extends a branch to open it like the lid of a can. My husband sleeps. Our lamps are dark. The dog still dreams. The sky exhales and lets me in on her secret: that each point of a constellation extends beyond bounty, holds an entire library of universes. From where I sit, I watch the moon fill the sky and set slowly into the salt marsh, bowing. The curtain opens. I wait. In a breathtaking second act, Aurora rises from the same spot, fuchsia and green emerging in a show stopping array of wonder. My breath catches in my throat—it’s my grandmother. She flutters and fills the air all around us. She laughs, beckons me in her Borealis way and changes like nature can into a bright green ball of light that lulls the babies to sleep. The oak tree lowers the roof down and zips itself slowly back together, shingle by shingle. My grandmother shoots back into the night sky before the lip closes; she cannot be contained. The windowsill winks with a flash of green. I open my mouth to whisper my thanks and thousands of particles of light fly out of it. They travel to the seams of my walls and illuminate the architecture of the room, line by line, and dim slowly to dark.

My husband sleeps. The dog still dreams.

I wrap two babies in two blankets and lay them in a crib next to each other.

The prayer plant scratches. The monstera loves.

The marsh swallows the tide like a sponge.