Night Moves

“I woke last night to the sound of thunder,
how far off I sat and wondered.”

Just a few moments ago I stood outside, watching the sun attempt to pierce the clouds smothering the sky. In the pale cold light of the waning afternoon, last night’s storms seemed far away and unreal, like a dimly remembered fragment of early childhood.

I’ve always been a light sleeper, waking up at least two or three times a night. In the last week or two before Molly died this tendency grew more pronounced. I would wake seemingly every couple of hours, listening in the dark for her breathing, reaching out in the dark to lay my hands on her and feel if she was sleeping peacefully. It’s taken me a month of traveling on weekends and sleeping in unfamiliar places to break myself of this habit.

But when I woke last night in the small hours of the morning (around 1:00 AM I think) my first thought was ‘the dog’s not feeling well’ and I groped blindly for a moment before I realized she was far, far away from me. I lay back down and then I heard it – the low distant rumble of thunder, sounding like someone dragging heavy furniture across a floor above.

It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to shut off the air conditioner in case the storm rolled in closer. I sat up and get out of bed, only to discover that my legs weren’t quite working right. Still sore from hiking, the muscles had stiffened and tightened while I was asleep, resulting in me lurching through the apartment like Frankenstein’s Monster, bouncing off of one corner and one kitchen chair on my way to the living room.

Oddly enough, it was dead quiet the next time I woke up. So I lurched back out to the living room, turned the air conditioner back on, and tumbled back into bed.

I’m not sure if I actually saw the lightning flash that woke me for the third time. Maybe I woke a split second before the storm lit up my bedroom, or maybe the flash somehow leaked past my eyelids to wake me up. I don’t know - all I can remember is waking up to a vivid impression of white light. There was a pause of about a heartbeat, then the loud CRACK-BOOM of thunder, directly overhead. I staggered out of bed, heading for the air conditioner again, and there was another bright flash and peal of thunder. When I stood before the air conditioner I was seized by a sudden fear that when I touched the knob to turn the unit off, lighting would strike it at that exact moment and I would be blasted out of existence in the seeming safety of my living room. A brief stand-off between me and the air conditioner followed, before I quickly snaked my arm out, turned it off, and went back to bed feeling vaguely triumphant and self-satisfied. Dan 1, air conditioner 0.

The last time I woke up was to the steady thrum of a heavy rain coming down. The rain was coming down so hard, the sound had an almost solid presence, as if a sound could somehow have physical qualities of thickness and density and depth. I rolled over and pushed the window shade aside, wanting to see this sound, but the panes were all misted over and all I could get was an impression of a world drowning. I rolled back over and lay still for a while, listening to the rain lash the roof, the window, the streets. The clock said it was sometime in some beastly early hour. Sleep wasn’t coming back so I got up, opened the front door to let the sound in, and put a kettle on the stove.

When the tea was up, I sat down at the kitchen table, watching the rain through the screen door. I thought about my travels of the past month, and all the friends I had seen, and friends I hadn’t seen. I wondered what they were all doing at that moment. Some, I knew were sound sleep. Others were no doubt awake: tending to a child, stretching for a run, getting ready for work. For a moment I felt that if I let my mind drift further I could somehow touch them, and make them aware of me, thinking of them, here in my kitchen in the very early morning. But such things aren't possible, and the feeling was only a waking dream, brought on by lack of sleep and the steady thrum of the rain.

“Ain't it funny how the night moves,
when you just don't seem to have as much to lose.
Strange how the night moves,
with autumn closing in.”