Staying up Late

   When you are a kid, staying up late is exciting. If you have permission from your parents, you feel like it's a very special treat. If you don't have permission, you are putting one over on them and that is even sweeter. Like when you huddle under your covers with a flashlight and read late into the night even though your neck gets stiff and you have to shift the book to the other side of your body because the arm you are leaning on feels like an elephant is sitting on it. You know you have to stay under the covers because they've already caught you twice when they saw the light leaking out from under your bedroom door. But the stiff neck is too uncomfortable so you have to think of something. A bathrobe stuffed under the crack takes care of the light situation and you can read until one in the morning - even on school nights. Oh yeah.  And this is just when  you are in seventh grade.

As you get older, you stay up late and do other things besides reading. Exciting, scary, naughty things like climbing out of the window and meeting your good buddy to roam the dark neighborhood speculating on what the people are doing in the few houses where a light is on. Maybe you take a dip in the one pool in the neighborhood. The fact that you are out and your parents have no idea makes you feel daring and dangerous.

But as you become much older, staying up late means writing papers, studying for tests, getting the big presentation put together, grading papers, creating lesson plans. Work - not so much fun. Oh, there is the occasional night out with friends. TGIF and all that. Fun, but not daring and dangerous.

You're even older and the late nights involve children with fevers, croup, bitter tummies, nightmares, perhaps a serious illness. Years go by and you are up because your teen hasn't come home at his curfew. That's a killer: you think of all the terrible things that could have happened. Maybe you even get in the car and drive the dark neighborhood trying to think of where he could be and checking for his car. Relief when you find it at the Perkins a mile away. If he'd only use the phone to call, you would be sleeping at this ungodly hour. Now, staying up late is not exciting or daring. Not so much fun anymore.

But sometimes you stay up late to write or draw or paint because it is a quiet time when no one else is making demands on your time. It is a time of freedom and peace. You know you are going to be tired in the morning when you have to get up at the normal time and take up the responsibilities of your daytime life. But now, in the silence,  you read, sitting in a chair under the only light on in the neighborhood providing a night-wandering kid something to speculate about.

A children's night poem:

Night-Night (Children)
Night-night moon Night-night stars Night-night noisy trucks and cars. Night-night sand box Night-night toys Night-night other girls and boys. Night-night mom Night-night dad Night-night Boogie Man who's not bad. It's time to go to sleep now, most all my night nights said. Night-night blankie Night-night bed. C.J. Heck

A late night poem by Carl Sandburg

II. HOME

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry
in the darkness.