Night Sailing

Things look different at night.

We sail, us two, in a boat of muddled dreams, docking at small islands of sleep, dotted across deep seas of disquietude.

In the dark we cannot fathom the waters depth, cannot know what lies beneath its murkiness. The beacon of morning often feels all too far off, beyond our horizon.

But we journey on. Our travels accompanied by the soft peaks and troughs of your daddy's breathing as he makes his own separate trip on another ocean beside us.

We navigate this journey differently sometimes. You wanting to paddle on, delighting in the waters lapping around you and the feeling of being rocked, whilst I - eyelids heavy - long for soft, warm shores and a bed of feathers for my head. Or, other times, you settle long before me and I am all adrift, wakened by thoughts which squirm and writhe like creatures of the deep.

But, still, we navigate this journey together. Every night. Our boat a shared bed. Our sails billowing with a guiding wind of love between us.

Things look different in the dark. Tonight I feel I am lost at sea. I have no compass or map for how to make this trip all over again.

But your body lays next to me. I feel my way to the soft, downy roundness of your head and run my hand along your familiar back and, all at once, I am anchored.

Phosphorescence

I stand alone by this window, alone with you. A cellophane windowed envelope beneath my foot betrays my rocking motion to the dark room. You answer it. You are awake. 

It is 2am. Late January. Snow has fallen in the garden below us. Thick. White. Virginal. Ready for the delighted feet of small children who will surely trail across it tomorrow morning when they awake. Heavy footed siblings. Sleeping now. Breathing softly and quietly in beds in rooms below us.

The falling of snow. Is this the source of this nighttime merriment? Did you want to make sure I saw the snow at it's freshest? When it lights up the night sky with the reflected glow of white?

Your arms are waving, grabbing, pulling at my hair. Your hands, in my face, rubbing at your eyes. I wonder at what those little hands would make of their first touch of snow. Those same fingers which, earlier today - on making a break for it out the kitchen door - had crawled, spider like, for the garden wall and caressed the soft, moist moss which grew upon the brick. How you studied it! I will let you touch the snow tomorrow little one. If it's still laying there come morning.

I stand alone by this window and I wonder, how many other parents stand alone at other windows? Rocking, wrestling, waiting, willing, wishing for sleep.

2.30am. A time when another me might have been padding home. Teetering. Shivering in clothes definitely not designed for winter protection. Lightheaded from noisy, jostling bodied dark rooms and nourished by fast food before falling into bed. Now I dance only in my kitchen and waver over my resolve to not eat one more biscuit from the tin. I stumble, with the hangover of yesterday's parenting, through days and am daily drunk on the delicious prospect of bedtime and 'maybe tonight will be better'.

3am. The snow will be silently melting. I hear a drift break away and fall across the roof. I see it's shadowy patterns on the dormer window of our bedroom. Your resolve is melting too. You cry, fuss, fight but you are slipping, sliding, slowly losing your resistance to sleep. I carry you back to our bed and offer you a breast again. You take it. Your eyes eventually closing.

I lie awake. I am aglow with the I interruption of my sleep. Thoughts tumble and crystallize through my weary brain. I cannot settle now. I pray that the snow will still be there come the morning.