THE DEEP DARK

et me tell you a little something, a secret. I love getting up in the night, and I always have. I know that if you’ve got babies right now, you’re probably going to have trouble believing that, but it’s true. When my babies were little and woke me in the night, I got up with them, and but for the few nights when the sleep deprivation pushed me near the limits of survival, I loved it. The night has a lovely intimacy, and in the dark my baby and I were the only two people alive. I loved nursing them and rocking them and looking at their little fingers curled like unfurled moonflowers. (I know their father would tell you something different, that there were nights that I stood by the side of our bed with a screaming bundle of infuriated human and said, “You know, it’s not like she and I are the only two people alive. You could get up and take a turn,” but those were moments, not themes.)

The night has a certain sort of delicious loneliness. For those of us who like to be alone and find ourselves good company, but are beset by family and children all day, the night has opportunities. I know that if I stay up long enough, I’ll be alone. It’s a fetish that I indulge only occasionally as a married woman, since a pervasive desire to be alone can hurt the feelings of your spouse, but I’m writing this now, in the deep, dark quiet night, all alone, just my thoughts and me.

When I was a little girl, getting up in the night was understandably frowned upon, and even thwarted. My brother James was a serious nighthawk, and in being such, I think he had spoiled it for the rest of us. My mum still tells the story of him as a toddler, getting up in the night and wandering from his crib. Something woke her (likely instinct) and she discovered him standing on the stovetop in his plastic-footed jammies, trying to turn on the burners under cover of darkness. After that, the hallway had a strategically connived wall of empty apple juice cans set up as part barrier, part alarm, and any attempt to get by it toppled the cans and brought the fuzz down on you, even if you were just going to look out the front window to see how good your night vision was.

My fondest memory as a teen wasn’t of a stolen kiss or a broken curfew (though technically, I got both) but of a walk in the night. I stole out my bedroom window and away with the boy next door. With my wool as my witness we got up to no big mischief but simply walked through the park in the night, through magic fog and mystic darkness. It is still the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me. I crept back in through my window that night, late and kissed, and with all my feelings about the luxury of the dark confirmed.

There is much to love in the night. I like that you can’t see much, that things are secret and wild, unrevealed and insubstantial. Perhaps because my heart is that of a writer, I love that you can’t see all of it. In the night, there are mysteries and uncertainties, and those empty spots where you aren’t quite sure what’s there are more than magical to me. The empty spots let me fill in the darkness myself. The night is like a coloring book; the lines are there, but the rest is up to me. You can wander or sit in the dark, writing stories about whatever may be in the gray spaces. There is more possibility in the dark.

As a grown-up, I still steal the nighttime moments where I can get them. I’ve always been near criminal when it comes to staying up too late. I love the hours after the family is asleep. My husband is in our bed, the girls are slumbering in theirs, so there are people here, but not really, and I am alone, but not really… and suddenly the world of possibility opens up in front of me. If I wake up in the night, I still get up and come downstairs, look out the window to test my night vision (it’s not that great anymore), and let my mind wander and think. Sometimes I make tea, and sometimes I sit in the night and I knit.

Don’t tell.