Sleep in the storm

4am and all I can think of is you. Not sleep. Not work 4 hours from now. My thoughts won’t let me. I feel the wind on my face. The window is open next to the bed. Next to your side of the bed, which is empty now. Open even on the stormiest nights and open wider since you left. I’ve been listening to the wind calling me through the open window. I wear one of your shirts to keep warm in the storm in our room, now my room, in our bed, now my bed. I get up and walk carefully in the dark through the clutter of clothing and books on the floor by the bed. Not able to withstand the assault of the light without you right now.

I need to go out into it and tell them.  

I can talk to them louder and longer in the storms, knowing that if a stray fisherman is sleeping on his boat he will keep sleeping and not hear my middle of the night madness. 

I pick my jeans up off the bathroom floor and pull them on. One sock falls out of the leg. I put it on and go back to the bedroom to get another stray one from the floor. Heavy coat off the door hook. Hat. The mittens you bought me for Christmas. Scarf. Extra Tuffs. Insulated skirt. 

I start the car and let it warm up while I scrape off the windshield, not wanting to use auto start and wake people at this hour.  Friends live on either side of me in the apartment building and have never seen me come and go in the middle of the night.  Things look normal when they come home at night and leave in the morning and my car is out there as expected.   

When I reach the harbor the wind has gotten stronger. I have to push hard against the car door to get out. I can breathe now, sleep be damned. The tide is out and the ramp is steep. I hold tightly to the railing with one mittened hand, the other out to my side for balance, and place my feet carefully where the ice has fallen through the grate on each step.  When I’m safely at the bottom and start to walk, I am calmer, the wind is calmer. Down here it is not as fierce but still enough to keep anyone but me away at 4:30am.

I see the first group as I start down the Q dock. Three otters, a mom, dad and baby. I stop and smile at them. A genuine smile, all the thoughts stop when I see them. Calm. The wind calming. They are calm. They know me and don’t move to get away. The parents look up and then lay their heads back down. The baby, a bit more curious. He starts towards me then stops and lays down and watches me for a moment before backing up to snuggle against mom again.  I watch them for a few minutes. I tell them I can’t sleep because of him. They don’t ask which him it is this time but I think the baby wonders.  I was here the night he was born. I started on Q and walked down to B. Almost an hour later I started back at Q and he was there in a small pool of red by mom. Dad swimming in circles nearby. Dad watched me and got closer and closer until he popped up just inches from me, celebrating.  They know me. I know his birthdate and I named him after someone from long ago. I walk on.

On P dock a large older one is resting and looks up at me without lifting his head. I slowly get to about 3 feet away then ask him if I can sit down before settling on the railing. I tell him I need to talk. He closes his eyes in response then goes back to dozing. And so, I settle in and talk.  Not in an almost whisper as I do on the still nights. I talk in a louder voice like I ‘m at a coffee shop with a friend, not all alone. The wind is my cover.  If I leaned forward I could touch him. I did this once on the beach. I’ve never told anyone. It was the kind of soft that will be in heaven. This one is gray around his head and looks wise. I know he’ll understand. I tell him about the empty bed, no one to enjoy the storm with, that I still cry when I make my own eggs that never turn out quite right, how I haven’t had a good cup of coffee since the last morning he made me one. He doesn’t think it’s foolish. I tell him it’s him that used to come down here with me often. He doesn’t think I should be over it yet like everyone else does but he does open his eyes and look at me with wonder about this. He’d thought it was the other one, the quiet man that listened to me as we walked and I showed him my otters. “Not him,” I say, “he left too, just more quickly.”   

A gust moves me just in time and takes the sadness. I feel exhilarated, adventurous and strong. I am the storm. Right now I believe it can all be carried away, that in awhile I’ll return to bed and sleep peacefully. That I’ll awaken a few hours from now without distracting grief. Grateful for the extra space in the bed. I’ll pick up my clothes and books and laundry in the daylight, while the plates with hardened egg yolk soak before I wash them and I will try again.

Until night when it comes back.

Sometimes I’m sure I’m going to give in to the urge to lay down on the dock next to one. Snuggled up close and warm to the softness. I don’t think they would hurt me. They know me. I think I would sleep.