Nighttime Wonderings

I never cease to wonder which part of us summons ourselves from the great and long distance of eternity, swim through the foggy, thick, kaleidoscope of our dreams only to wake up and wonder about what we're all doing here. Each night, before bed, my 7yo prepares for her nighttime journeys by choosing from among her many drinking cups with a straw, fills one with ice and water, and puts it on her nightstand. She knows she's going to faraway places.

When I hear the wind whisper a lullaby to the trees, prompting our chocolate bear hamster, Cleopatra, to poke her nose from her little burrow, I tiptoe on slippered feet out of my girl's room. I walk down the hall, peek into the darkened bedroom onto my 12 yo's room and wonder if he's reached the Milky Way by now. The birds nesting on our back porch ruffle their feathers a little. I move to the adjacent bedroom and stop at my 14 yo's door, but I don't go in. He's a busy sleeper, meeting and conversing with the spirits of great innovators and philosophers of times past, so I let him work away.

I make my way down the stairs. I remember the plan, which is that I am to live a human life for a little while and when time calls humans to bed, our bodies are to obey. I slip into bed next to my husband and he rolls over in my direction, sleepily tells me he had one foot in the ether, meditating on God's neurons and the fractal Universe, before I came in. I smile in the darkness, feeling the spinning of the black holes that permeate everything, and breathe in stardust.