Afraid of the Dark?

Are we all afraid of the dark?

I know that I was.

Let's blame my older brother, who, when I was wee and we were sharing a bedroom in Enid, Okla., told me with older-brother-certainty that there was a Man in the Closet who would dismember me if I fell asleep. I didn't sleep at all for a couple of years.

Our son didn't like the dark, either. One of his favorite movies as a Little One was The Wizard of Oz, so for his room we got him a wastebasket that featured images from the film. But we noticed that he would place that wastebasket outside his bedroom door at night. We asked why. He didn't like sleeping in a dark room with a witch, he said. I can dig it.

But I matured--well, in some ways. And my primal fear of the dark retreated a bit.

Until this year.

Let's back up a little. For years--and I mean years--Joyce I would, except in the worst weather, take a little drive after supper. An errand or two. A Diet Coke. A cup of decaf at a drive-thru. It was one of my favorite times of the day--riding along with her, talking and laughing and remembering. Sometimes crying.

But then, this year, something happened. I have no idea what it was. But I realized that I no longer liked driving out in the evening or night. Once EDT died and EST returned--and Darkness Reigned after supper--I suddenly found that I'd rather stay home and read than climb in the car and drive out into Darkness.

Joyce says she feels the same--and whether her claim is an instance of her Truth-Telling or of her Lying-to-Make-Dan-Feel-Better, who can say? Either way, I'm grateful.

And so ... after supper now ... after we clean up and get the dishwasher humming away ... and after we turn out the downstairs lights ... it's upstairs we go. Joyce heads into her study and continues working on whatever writing project is consuming her at the moment.

I change into my jammies, climb into bed, put beside me the pile of books I'm reading at the moment,* take a glance at the clock (oh, maybe 6:15 or so--pathetic?).

I read about an hour--ten pages or so from each book--as the Darkness deepens, before Joyce comes in to join me, before the Man in the Closet has a chance to emerge, machete in hand.

We stream bits of shows we like, then about 8:30, off goes the light, and we mutter and mumble a bit more about our days--past, current, future--until Morpheus (not the Man) comes out of the closet, wraps us in the warmth of his arms, protecting us from the Man, from witches, from everything that could possibly ever hurt us ...



*current list of books: Wilkie Collins' The Law and the Lady, Susan Orlean's The Library, Joseph J. Ellis' American Dialogue, poet Barbara Hamby's Bird Odyssey, the latest Jack Reacher, Past Tense, Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor novel The Emerald Lie