Blackbird singing in the dead of night

I couldn't sleep. It's four in the morning and I'm awake and posting on my blog. The first night that here in my apartment alert and alone while the world outside quietly sleeps. I can remember such moments first distinctly when I when I was twelve or so in the house of my childhood. I insisted, with pride and fledgling independence, that I wanted my own room and my parents gave one to me by partitioning our dark and unused living room in the front of the house. Away from the other rooms where my family slept, I found myself very independent and very alone, but not altogether so secure, with bookshelves and a display case as my wall away from the cluttered room beside me and the front door. I always imagined an earthquake or a falling person toppling that makeshift wall, and I pushed my bed as far from there as possible.

Sometimes in the night, with my head besides my heavily curtained window, I could hear a bird. Always in the wee hours of the morning, I could hear it crying out in the night and the baby bird sounds that broke out in response. Now that I think about it, I realize there may have been a nest in the eaves beneath the roof, but at the time I thought that the nest must be in the Chinese chestnut tree that drooped in our lawn over the driveway. Always in the dark I heard the birds, and far from being comforted they scared me. What were they doing so late at night? Talking to each other so loudly that they woke their sleeping neighbor.

In that room, far from my sisters and parents, I remember waking again, with welcomed relief, to the sounds of my mother making breakfast and crawling out to the kitchen when she called me to eat.

Back to bed, I think. Goodnite.