It was about midnight and the kind of sleep interruption where I awoke practically standing, poised for reaction. It took me a moment to regroup. Then, as only my middle-of-the-night brain could manage, I began the hunt for the answer. I moved about my dark house, opening closets and flipping on lights, peeking in on sleeping kids and in general making sure that there was not only nothing broken or wrong in the house, but also that there were no unwelcome visitors, animal or human.

Now, admittedly, my mind is NOT the most rational in the middle of the night. It’s like I half expect to see a bear peeking into the fridge for a honey snack. But when there is a significant crash, I want an answer.

And that night, there was none. I could find nothing. And, believe me, I looked.

So then I spent the rest of the night in this sort of half sleep. I even kept the light on. I don’t know why the light gave me comfort, but for some reason it just made me feel a bit safer. Not that there was any reason to feel unsafe. But as I said before, my middle of the night mind is not the most rational sort of bedfellow.

I realized in all of this that I don’t fear finding something/someone. I wander the house in the middle of the night without any issue, visiting the basement or any dark corner as needed. I am totally prepared to deal with any house issue or anyone that thinks they are getting into my home, much less anywhere near my kids. I am the protector of my family, and as my son likes to call me I am like a “little ball of hate” when it comes to protecting my family and friends. But I do fear the unanswerable. There is something very unsettling to me when I can’t say “Oh it was just X, go back to sleep”. It keeps me up at night.

And in the light of day, I laugh at how ridiculous I am and hope that I can sneak in a nap somewhere. But it does highlight for me how, at this stage of my life, there is no one I am intimately sharing my life and bed with, so there’s no one there to tell me that it’s nothing and that I should lay my crazy head back down and just go to sleep. It would be nice to have a partner that might wander the house with me checking on everything, but then say, “Ok, enough, you nutball, let’s get some sleep.”

Until then, I’ll just keep the light on.