Night's Passing

At night on La Salle, it was always light. Strong street lamps cast slanting shadows of iron scrolls on my bedroom wall. When it rained, I could pull the thin cotton curtain back and watch the tree branches get wet in the shower.

I remember one night last spring, when for the first time ever, all the street lights on my part of the street were out. It was dark, and I was so relieved. I remember standing poised on the windowsill of the living room, ready to go to bed, but waiting for the street to blink on in a second. It didn't, and I tiptoed over to my bed and crawled into a deeper sleep.

There's something unsettling when you wake up in a hotel room, and those curtains, heavy, sometimes with a plastic liner block out every bit of the night's passing. If you wake up in the middle of the night, it's hard to find where you are. I've never particularly liked that sensation, the disorienting rake your mind must pull through places you might be.

When we arrived here, there were no curtains on the windows, so, like it or not, we rose with the sun. Since my father's help installing dark curtains on each window, I now have a little more time each morning to slumber. Yet as I'm drifting off to sleep in my room, I draw back one of the curtains in my room just a hand span's width to let in a little of the near-opaque night. It's so much darker here, but not in an ominous way. The rhythmic chorus of birds and crickets is louder, and when I wake up, I find a small crowd of trees at the window.