Dearest Rachel –
It seems that, far too often for my liking, I’m up at a ridiculous hour of the morning these days. It probably comes with the territory that is aging, to be honest. The last chapter of Ecclesiastes talks about how one will “rise at the sound of a bird” despite hardly being able to actually hear anything, and this fate would seem to have befallen me at this point.
It doesn’t help that, by the end of the day, I’m too bored to stay up on my own. Most of the videos I might watch while the boys hang out in the family room need to be saved until such time as Daniel is available to watch them with me, so there’s little for me to do once it gets dark but to bundle myself off to bed – a quick trip of but perhaps four or five feet. Some days, I’m in bed barely after nine because of this; on others, Logan will head upstairs to bed by then and Daniel will join me for our usual time together, at which point, I’ll be up with him until nearly eleven. It’s a hit-or-miss, fifty-fifty situation.
Not that either option really dictates as to whether I’m up by five or thereabouts; some mornings, I actually can roll over and fall back to sleep, but at other times, once I’m up, that’s pretty much it. Try as I might – and I do try, as it’s pointless to get up in such darkling hours – all I find myself doing is lying there in the pitch blackness, wondering what to do next. It’s this time of day – night? – that sees me worrying about future events, as if I could do anything about them at that hour.
Today, the darkness wasn’t as much of an issue as it usually is; normally at around four or five in the morning, it’s so black in the house that I need to grab a phone in order to make my way around without stubbing my foot on furniture (what did we do in the days before we had these things, honey?). This morning, however, there was a pale light seeping in through the picture window in the sunroom. I was wondering if it might be moonlight filtering in from the sky, since the full moon is more than capable of throwing that much light into the night sky. But as I made my way into the sunroom, and saw it for my own eyes… let’s just say I was a little disappointed.
Far be it from me to criticize their viewing habits, though; if one is an insomniac, sometimes some mindless white noise from the television is just the ticket to relax oneself, and send one off to sleep. If it does its job properly, well, one can’t be expected to be awake enough to turn it off, now, can one? I’m just glad our neighbor doesn’t have a taste for watching certain… unsavory… entertainments, as he’s effectively giving everybody a show by having it on like this. As it is, the only real issue is the light being cast upon our lawn and through the picture window.
And as annoying as the light might be to me in the moment that I’m up and aware of it, it’s not that from any perspective I might ordinarily find myself kept awake by it. Up until the moment I actually got out here to look at it more closely, I just assumed that the light flowing into the house was the moon, and it’s not as if I would have objected to it (as if it would have made a whit of difference if I did). It’s just the disappointment of discovering that… well, it’s not the moon at all.
At least it’s distant enough that I don’t find myself captivated by it like I often do with television sets; it’s probably helped by the fact that I can’t hear it and follow along, since there is our back wall, both back yards, and their back wall separating it from me. Unfortunately, it’s not sufficient to motivate me to get up and get started on the day (since at this point, the gym is open, if I’d be willing to dress out and head over there); I find myself wobbling back to bed to contemplate what I’d just been looking at, and wondering where in the night sky the moon actually is. For what it’s worth, I do eventually make my way over to the gym, but between my usual lethargy and dawdling over breakfast, I’m not at the ‘office’ until after eleven. Not that there’s anything pressing for me to deal with at this point, but still… it’s about as disappointing as finding out that what I thought was the moon was a television set.
Anyway, I should probably get on with my day all the same, honey. Keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 