April Fiction Series

Four tales for April!

 April is the spring variant of October in ancient calendars. As I have written before, the last day of April is Walpurgisnacht, and like Halloween, it was once a time for ghosts, goblins, monsters, and eldritch tales. 

Therefore, I bring you four short stories in honor of that old holiday. Two were written years before, and I have updated them for this use. Two are brand new. Like in October, I will share a link to my fiction site, called Shadows Lengthen, and each week's featured tale will be there. While you're there, please read the other stories on that site if you're interested. 

Monsters are one thing, of course, and the last stories I shared had four creatures: a vampire, a werewolf, a witch, and a thing that lurked in a pond (I’m not even sure what it was). This month’s tales are a little different. There are still some scares for you, I hope, but there is a more reflective piece as well, this time.

First up is Mother Mary: Haunted by a strained relationship with his mother and his father's mysterious death, a young lawyer receives a cryptic call drawing him home only to uncover unsettling family secrets that will change his life, one way or another.

Week two: A man and his scythe: a timeless dance under the sun, where the rhythm of the blade unearths memories of a life lived and years passed, in The Mower.

Next, in a silent world, a survivor and a mysterious guide walk among the destruction of the end of all things. What remains when humanity is gone? Only the stars and the echo of a love born in the face of total loneliness. The story is called—perhaps fittingly—Ruin.

Finally, three missing arcane books, a mad monk, a museum tour and a forbidding ancient ritual. What happens when the wrong person learns the secrets that bring about the chaos of a demonic power? Find out in The Ludwig Collection.

If tales of terror are not your thing, I will resume weekly essays in May. In the meantime, feel free to catch up on the previous essays as well. There are a few years' worth on the DRO blog. I hope you will find them entertaining, thought-provoking, and mind-opening, as usual.

As always, thanks for reading and coming back each week for more!

The Box

On Tuesdays, I arrive at work by eight, unpack my glasses, water and tea, and log onto my computer to begin the day. On this particular Tuesday, I got an email from a parcel carrier notifying me that my item would be arriving by three that day. I hadn't ordered anything (had I?). I wasn't sure if Micki or our eldest son had, so I disregarded the message. Soon I was lost in the vicissitudes of the workday.

By quitting time, I had forgotten all about that email. I was mentally tired and ready to let the dogs out and be “home Dave”. That's when I noticed that there was a cardboard box on our front stoop. I brought it in and placed it on the dining room table. When Micki arrived and, after we exchanged welcome homes, I mentioned to her that a large something had been delivered. “Who is it for,” she asked. “Not sure,” I replied. 

During the fall and winter, when our daughter-in-law and granddaughter were staying with us, we encouraged her to use my name when having her orders shipped to our house to avoid confusion. So, for months, boxes of diapers and baby snacks and her beloved Manga novels all arrived at our doorstep addressed to Yours Truly but intended for someone else. This had the somewhat unwelcome effect of desensitizing me to deliveries with my name on them since they were rarely for me.

With this in mind, after we deposited our work gear and got the pups sorted, I took a closer look at the mysterious object. To my slight surprise, it was addressed to me, though that might not mean anything. I could not read the return address which had been smudged or worn away. Okay, I thought, moment of truth. So, I dug out my trusty pocket knife and carefully cut the neatly taped seams. The stout box eventually gave way to my deft blade and I pried it apart. Within was a large, rectangular shape shrouded in heavy bubble wrap. Returning my knife to my hip pocket, I withdrew the wrapped object and set it on our dining room table, and removed the packing media.

Inside was a box of dark-stained wood. A foot long, front to back, and nine inches wide, it stood about five inches tall and was obviously handmade and very old. Toward the front of the top section was a carved indent that one could use to slide the lid open. I cautiously slid it forward, hoping each moment that I wasn't about to be blown to bits by a complex and handsomely made nail or ball-bearing bomb. It has happened before to others, but I was too invested to stop.

Within was a mound of folded papers and small notebooks with an envelope topmost addressed to me. I opened the envelope warily. The handwriting immediately soothed my jangling nerves. Here was the fine script of my good aunt explaining the provenance of the box. It had been given to her by her Uncle Elmer Gephart, my paternal grandmother's (and my good aunt’s mother’s) elder brother. The box had been Uncle Elmer’s grandfather's, a man called Alexander Zimmerman. Aunt MJ had scratched out a small family tree from Alexander down to my brother, me, and our cousins. After reading and re-reading, I set her card aside and started to stumble through the contents of the box. 

I made only a preliminary foray. The box was full of old check stubs, deeds, small tables, or ledger books. In these pocket notebooks were folded bits of paper, either receipts handwritten in sprawling 19th Century script, or neat numbers showing deductions from a starting amount. I gently unfolded one paper that was a summons from the sheriff to a minor hearing to attest to something which is as yet undeciphered, but it looked serious.

I found another small piece of paper upon which was written “The barn burned down on June 16th, at twenty minutes of four oclock (sic). Jennie W. Gephart, 1920”, in green ink. On the other side, the same message in thinner black ink, less scrawled. The Jennie in the note was Great Aunt Jennie—my grandmother's older sister. That the barn had burned down was a tale that has become legendary in the family’s oral tradition. Until now, though it had no fixed point in history. I was holding in my hand evidence of its veracity and significance to a woman who was in her nineties when I was but a lad.

Among much else, there was a small, folding fabric envelope complete with an advertisement encouraging farmers to buy better fertilizer inscribed on it. Slid into one of the pockets of the envelope was a bank book complete with a register to keep one's investments and expenditures carefully balanced. There were other treasures, too. Several pocket-sized notebooks with swirling, colorful covers were partially filled with notes and numbers but were largely empty. In this, I began to see a commonality with my own stash of unfilled notebooks. Here an intention, there a reminder, bits of receipts folded and smaller notes tucked away, but otherwise generally empty. They had been started with good intentions and were thrust in the breast pocket of a jacket that was hung on a hook in the closet, was restlessly sought for, and finally replaced with another nickel notebook. Both were later found and placed in this box with all the other items of significance. This mental picture played through my head in seconds and was familiar enough to make me realize that these same tendencies in myself are echoes of my ancestor, long gone and yet living in my DNA, whose possessions I was rifling in my dining room 150 years on.

I spent the rest of that evening captive to a hereditary chain dragging at my heart. This box had in it an entire, though fragmented history, compiled and stored, waiting to be sorted and made sense of. That my good aunt had sent it to me filled me with a sense of honor and gratitude that I could not, at that moment, properly process. Here I was, the recipient of my great-great-grandfather's box of papers which had opened a wormhole from his time to my own. Gazing into this tear in spacetime, I could see the old farm, the steep hills and dusty lanes winding away into hazy, sepia-toned tintypes of the generations that had gone before. These papers and notebooks were stored in this box against some future date when they might be required as proof of this or that payment or debt. They had lain, stored in the old farmhouse,  and then passed to his son-in-law (my grandmother’s father) and then to his son, Uncle Elmer, and finally to my good aunt who had kept it for decades, to arrive in my possession last week.

I have had some experience with historical documents over the years and I knew how to proceed, at least in part. This was not the first batch of genealogical information that my good aunt has sent me. The entire Bare file in our Randolph Room has been filled with information that she has forwarded to me over the years. Because the librarians and historians in the library’s genealogical library and archive—called the Randolph Room—have more experience with such things, I went to them to share about the box and I was gratified to find that they were very interested to see it. 

Micki suggested that it would be good to ask them about the kind of folders and envelopes and sleeves that might help to protect the documents. As I reflected on their worth as an anchor to our family history, I not only wanted to preserve them, but I also wanted to carefully catalog the contents. Prudence demands that I pull out each item, carefully unfold it, and log it in a notebook so that, at any point in the future, everything in it can be tracked. Someday, this box will be handed to another member of the family and I want to have contributed to its provenance, in the same way my good aunt has done for me.

The Randolph Room librarians will come in handy because they understand what some of the documents are and they can also help me to decipher the writing. The head librarian in the Randolph Room (and a friend for many years) has uncanny skill for reading old handwriting and helped our library director to translate a series of journals for his book. Although I once prided myself on the ability to emulate the writing of former ages, my eye and brain are not trained to read it with equal skill.

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As the prince of Denmark and his only true friend are walking through a churchyard, they come across a gravedigger digging a grave. As the man plunges his spade into the dirt, he casts up several skulls. Hamlet, in reflective mood, asks Horatio, 

“There’s another. Why may not that be the skull of a
lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillities, his
cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Why does he suffer
this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a
dirty shovel and will not tell him of his action of
battery? Hum! This fellow might be in ’s time a great
buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his
fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the
fine of his fines and the recovery of his recoveries,
to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? Will his
vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double
ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of
indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will
hardly lie in this box, and must the inheritor himself
have no more, ha?”

The honest Horatio responds with, “Not a jot more, my lord.” Hamlet’s point is simple. In life, documents like deeds and vouchers, which have meaning in themselves, also help to give us a sense of meaning and permanence. Our ledgers, our taxes, our bank statements, and appraisals all seem to give significance to the question of why we are here. Shakespeare’s genius in the scene was to use the gravedigger as a counterpoint to these illusory realities. Eventually, as the scriptures say, we return to dust. The papers and deals and debts and credits matter little to the skull “knocked about” with the sexton’s spade. As Hamlet meditates on this fact, we see the futility of the busy occupations of our lives.

In the context of my great-great-grandfather’s box, I felt a similar realization. These documents were of incredible import to him. They were likely of incredible value to his children, too. What was once so valuable and important to him as proof of legal ownership or a testament to money owed or earned is now an heirloom in my house. Their only real value can be calculated by the concrete evidence they provide in showing that the past generations lived and worked and loved and hurt and eventually died with fears and cares all their own, in some cases based on the papers in the box.

My father and his siblings, their remaining cousins, their children (and my cousins) are heirlooms of sorts, too. We are genetic proof of those who came before. Our combined memories contain keystones of experience that have been exchanged in common remembrances between all of us. Whether my father or my aunt or my grandmother did the telling, I keep the stories in my memory, knowing that they are a picture of our shared heritage. The box and its contents, for me, represent a tangible anchor that rests in family history and stretches all the way to me, an unknown scion of my twice great-grandfather, who may have been kind to my grandmother, who, in her turn, was gentle and caring with me (in her brusque way). I have been found worthy to take on the custody of the documents that formed the foundation of the reality that she took for granted as family and heritage. I did not know that they existed until last week. This week, I feel a strengthening connection to my heritage that I can barely express.

Much must be done. Preserving and cataloging the documents is just the beginning. Copies must be made, where they can be done safely so that the Bare file can be expanded. Future generations (I hope) will want to know where they come from and who came before. They will want to experience the strange sensation that I have felt again and again, of finding physical evidence of people who only existed in stories passed down around a kitchen or dining room table over pie and coffee. It is an amazing feeling to have proof that these were real people with worries, concerns, fears, hopes, dreams, joys and interests all their own, no different than we have. Their world was different, in some ways impossibly hard compared to my era. They lived and through their lives and their choices, subsequent generations were born and grew older. It is true for every family, but it is unarguably true for this one. I have the proof.

As I pull open the box again and begin trying to put its contents into some kind of order, my heart is full. My mind is thrown back into the mists of my heritage, but it is also cast into the obscure future. Maybe someday, some child or grandchild or great-grandchild will have a philosophical and literary bent and not know where it comes from. They may be fascinated by history in general and family history specifically. Along with an ancient steamer trunk full of half-filled notebooks, pictures, and favorite books, they may find a handmade slide-top box. Opening it they might discover a note from a distant ancestor, whose bones, much like the skulls in Hamlet’s churchyard, have long been moldering in the earth. I hope that they might feel, as I have felt, a thin but strong chain, leading them back to my own life and to the lives of those who came before that make up our family tree. If they do, they will find a cast of characters whose fragmented histories will fill in gaps in their own lives, and explain quirks, tendencies, preferences, pet peeves and drives. As they comb through the documents, they will be drawn into the mists of the past and learn about the family, and the box will continue to be an anchor to the ones who came before.

Road Life

In the autumn of 2023, Evan and I departed home to move him from Asheboro to Portland, Oregon. For five days, from Sunday until the following Friday, we crossed the epically massive United States, driving from the Piedmont on our side of the Appalachian Mountains across the prairie, into the high country and into the high desert, and finally down from the Columbia Plateau into Portland. We drove about eight hours each day, in four-hour shifts, stopping at pre-reserved hotels, did the walk-through of his apartment, and slept there on Friday, before his big “pod” of possessions arrived the next day. It is officially the longest road trip I have ever taken, and it made an indelible impression on me in so many ways. It also cemented for me a basic fact about myself that I suspected but now know for sure: I am not made for long road trips.

It’s not that we didn’t have a good time. It was an amazing experience. We bonded, and that was well worth the challenging nature of the drive. Our adventure far surpassed several pilgrimages to Louisiana and one two-day expedition to Minnesota for a family reunion by way of New York City. We drove to the Big Apple, dropping a much younger Evan off at his New York Film Academy summer camp there and then headed northwest. Early on, we drove to Pennsylvania regularly to see family there, but Reading is a mere 484.7 miles, four states, and about seven hours away. It’s nothing to sneeze at, but it can be done in one day and is a moderate trip, especially since the drive is uneventful and fairly scenic if you like farmland.

Day-long drives aren’t a bad thing if one has a vehicle that gets decent gas mileage and is comfortable. Our drive across the country, which was five day-long drives in a row, was especially daunting. Imagine all six feet three inches of me wedged into a Honda Civic passenger seat with bags in the footwell and surrounded by drinks, snacks, and a book or two, and you’ll get a sense of my physical discomfort. Evan is tall, too (though less broad), and I know that he struggled as well. He definitely still has his youth, but he was wrecked for several weeks after. I took an extra week off work just to recuperate. Despite all this, though, he masterfully organized and planned the trip and deserves major credit for handling the whole thing beautifully. 

It was a very long, very intense week. We drove 2,808 miles through nine states, stayed at four hotels, and listened to about forty hours of music or podcasts. We had his very big, gregarious, and sweet dog Chloe with us in the back seat, which made things a little more exciting at rest stops and hotels. She was somewhat disoriented by days of travel (her idea of excitement up to that point was chasing the family cats and trying to hump our poor family pug). When we stopped for the night, she would frequently shake windows with her booming bark anytime someone walked by our room.

On the flight back to NC, I decided that it would be at least five years before I did anything so physically and mentally draining again. Even so, it was so much fun and a life-changing experience. If Evan asked me to drive back with him, I’d forget my promise and fly to Portland to help him pack up and drive homeward. We certainly miss having him around. Plus, it would be nice to have all three boys in the same region again.

I’m a man of physical activity. I like to be up and moving. Even when I’m sitting in my chair in the den with the dogs, I’m usually up every little bit to move laundry around or some other household chore. Driving gets dull after a while. There is nothing to do but sit for prolonged periods, getting stiff and sore from just not moving. We listened to podcasts and had some good chats, but after eight hours cramped into a packed car, even the most engaging content can get a little wearisome, and there are only so many topics to cover in conversation. At some point, someone asks the question, “What is your favorite book,” for the third time and sullen silence ensues. Luckily, I gave the boy plenty of opportunity to comment on my driving during my shifts, where, whether he knew it or not, he was almost directly quoting his mother, saying, “Jeez, Dave, are you paying attention to the road?”

America is a beautiful place and we gasped in awe and her natural splendor. And yet, something about America’s sprawling highways and interstates makes me crave calorically dense, processed cheese food and crunchy treats. Sometimes I wanted peanut M&Ms, and other times I wanted Combos, but I was always noshy for something sweet or salty or some combination thereof. I also tended to prefer soft drinks, though I’m not usually a big soda drinker. I now know that a 20-ounce bottle of caffeine jammed sugary cola can really help me get into the mindframe of a long drive. A deeply negative side effect of eating gas station or rest stop kibble during a long car ride is that eventually, the digestion rebels and fills the lower intestines with noxious methane gas. Being that we are men, we let fly rather than suffer the pressure of the ailment that Evan calls ‘bubble guts’, but he has always had deeply malodorous farts that shrank the small enclosed space of the car’s tiny cabin forcing us to ventilate to the outside air.

Beyond the risks of prolonged sitting, like blood clots and deep-vein thrombosis, and the damage from sugary drinks and greasy snacks, we also had to factor in regular meals. Because we were on a tight schedule and had Chloe in the car, Evan and I tried to keep the meals to fast-food stops during the day and then find something suitably local after we checked into the hotel for the evening. I heartily approved of this efficient thinking on Evan’s part, but invariably, when you eat a lot of fast food, you run a risk of digestive uncertainty. What we made up in speedy drive-thru service, we could certainly lose at rest stops a few hours later. This was the case with one of Nebraska’s fast food franchises,  unironically called Runza. If you’re in the Cornhusker State for any reason, take my word for it and avoid that stop on your bucket list unless you’re into prolonged intestinal distress. 

Years before, hoping to save money on expensive and unhealthy fast food for a family of five, we packed the boys in our trusty minivan with a cooler full of homemade sandwiches, small bags of chips, some drink boxes and bottled water, and a large bag of party-sized candy bars to be given out at ‘hundred-mile celebrations’. The boys griped endlessly about this because they preferred fast food to healthy choices, as all kids do. By the time we arrived at our destination, our middle son had groused so much that we abandoned our health-focused plans of the first leg and drove through fast food stops just to keep them quiet. Despite all the lamentation, though, we always tooted the horn whenever crossing state lines, which had the nice combination of keeping the kids engaged in the trip and scaring the hell out of surrounding drivers.

In later years, when it was just her and I driving somewhere, Micki had the brilliant idea to fight the monotony of a long ride with regular two-hour stops. Not only would we fuel up and refill snacks or get lunch or dinner, but we also switched up drivers. This made for nice breaks that kept just one person from being completely exhausted by the end of the journey and also made bathroom and food stops more predictable. One of the best things about the East Coast is that it is absolutely coated with Sheetz gas stations (I am not getting royalties for this product placement). At this travel-focused stop, one can use a clean bathroom, request food that is “made to order”, get protein bars, candy, crunchy snacks, drinks, and whatever else might be needed, and (for those who are card-carrying participants) get three cents off per gallon at the pumps. Our two-hour interval breaks are sometimes less or more than the allotted time, based on the location of these gas stopovers, but we aim to hit Sheetzes all along our route for convenience and familiarity.

With all of these trek-easing rules in place, a spin across the neighboring states can be quite pleasurable. We usually bring a book or some other distraction for when we’re not driving. The last long trip we took carried us to Long Island for a family funeral about a year ago and has been covered in other essays, but wound up being the longest we have been in a car at one go at least since I returned from Portland. Despite the sad nature of the trip, Micki’s driving itinerary, spaced out with lots of breaks and switch-ups, made the day, though long, still tolerable. 

It is hard to imagine it now, but when I was a young driver, I made several long interstate trips. The first was a drive from Reading to Fort Wayne, Indiana. I drove my 1987 Chrysler LeBaron, “hoopty” as my friends named it. The car had bench seats, no A/C, no tape or CD player, and got crappy gas mileage. And yet, with a little luck and ingenuity (and no speeding tickets), I made it safely to the Hoosier State and back and then drove through to New Jersey. If I were Pops (and I have had the relevant experience with our lads) and the Dave that I was back then was departing on one of these long road trips, I would have forbidden him. I certainly traumatized myself a few times during those lone voyages. I guess Pops knew that experience was a good teacher and simply hoped for the best. He probably also realized that I would have gone either way. I was a reckless rascal. Despite that, I had a specific plan of attack for that particular escapade.

I was no stranger to long trips, even then. I’d made the journey to Indiana several times during the year that I attended college there, though someone else was always driving. The first trip I made was with my school friend, Jason Sterner and his father (who also happened to cuss quite a lot for a preacher) and was done totally at night, when traffic would be less dense. I think I slept through much of that trip, which was probably better since Sterner’s father spent most of the time lapsing between singing hymns and swearing at other drivers. During that ride I learned that everyone had their preferences for the best way to undertake a long journey by car.

For me, the ideal road trip was—as with Pop Sterner—done in one go, with maybe a pitstop or two for a wee break and refueling (no road number twos was my motto unless it cannot be helped). No nighttime travel, though. My theory was, if you have a flat tire or other breakdown, the middle of nowhere at night is a great way to be disappeared by some hillbilly psychopath just hoping for a disabled vehicle and a skinny kid to torture. I didn’t want to stop for food or drinks. I learned from Uncle Dan, who used to plan trips out months in advance, to prep the vehicle with food and drinks as if one would be driving across an apocalyptic landscape rather than the heartland of these United States. 

I therefore bought two six packs of Mountain Dew and several sleeves of my favorite candy bar. Those rode shotgun with me along with my trusty 1998 spiral-bound Rand McNally road atlas with route highlighted. Finally, on the day of departure, I drove through my favorite (at the time) fast food joint and grabbed a bag of ten or fifteen cheeseburgers for fifty-nine cents each. 

For entertainment, because the old hoopty was so sparse in that department, I rigged up my Sony Discman as powered by the cigarette lighter in the dash and added portable PC speakers that allowed me to crank my tunes from the back seat. It took a couple of test runs to get the volume just right with the windows down and the engine roaring on the interstate, but once I had it sorted, my trips were set. I honestly only remember the drives, not the destinations, which means that I got way more out of the adventure, I guess. 

Rolling home, broke and tired, though, I felt as though the world was my own to explore and in just a few short years, I would take a fateful drive to North Carolina to start a new life. I was in a different car, then, and had all my earthly possessions jammed into it, but it was by far the best of the lone car trips I ever made and also the last one of any real length by myself.

Recently, Micki and I drove to Boone, NC, over a Saturday. It isn’t that far away, but it is a pretty jaunt across a third of our state into the western mountains. On the way, we stopped at Sheetz, got food and drinks and topped off the tank. We chatted about everything, and the radio never came on except when we needed to listen to the satnav lady give directions. On the way back, Micki taught me about the female Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut and I realized as we neared home that we’d gotten quite good at road life together. Soon, we will have to make a try for PA again, and since air travel is dubious at best right now, driving may be our only option.

As for a really long drive, I might be up for a scenic, meandering cruise across the nation, where we only spend a few hours in the car and stay at scenic places and shop or go on hikes and stay at Bed and Breakfasts and then hop in the family automobile the next day, slowly accruing distance. Right now, the idea of a high-paced, intensely scheduled cross-country excursion when time is a factor gives me something like bad nerves. Either way, I guess the best thing about long road trips is also the worst thing about them. They are fun and can be made tolerable by spending time with people you love on the way, but they can also be taxing and frustratingly cramped. Like Micki and I, if the whole thing is properly arranged, or like our trip across the country where Evan had the whole thing taped out to perfection, it might be tolerable, but for right now, anyway, I think I’ll stay home.

Eight's Not That Late

I made reservations for Valentine's Day at a ritzy sushi bar in Winston-Salem, about forty-five minutes away. Because we both worked until 4 that day, I requested a table for eight o’clock because until we got home, changed, and headed out (after taking care of the dogs, too), I didn’t want us to feel rushed. As we drove to our romantic dinner, we both felt more and more like this reservation time was a bit beyond the pale. It was not that either of us were opposed to a romantic evening out. We were just in doubt about how late it was getting and how tired we both felt. Reserving a table for eight meant that, until we parked, walked to the restaurant, got seated, ordered, got the food, ate, had dessert, paid the check and headed back to our car, it would be a very long 45-minute drive home, in the dark, on a Friday night, after a long and exhausting week, well past our usual bedtime.

When I originally made the plans, I only thought about how nice it would be for us to have a romantic evening at a fancy restaurant. We eat out fairly often, but we rarely go full-on fancy. I felt we deserved to get dolled up and go out on the town. I paid no attention to how late the reservation was (or how far away it was) because I didn’t consider that we would be worn out. It seemed quite reasonable. In almost no way was eight o’clock that “late”. 

I have attended meetings and been invited to events set to begin at eight and never turned a hair. People in Spain don’t settle into their dinners until the sun is on the horizon. Movies start at eight. When I was a kid, the local channels all had an eight o’clock movie and some primetime shows (like MacGyver and The A-Team) started at eight. Back then, I used to long to be allowed to stay up past eight so I could watch these shows and movies. After the movies and the news, Johnny Carson came on. TV was just getting started. There were hours of wonderful programming just waiting to be stared at, back then. It seemed like no one I knew was ever in bed before eleven. 

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One of the challenges of my adult life is remembering how old I am. It’s not that the number is important so much, but that I tend to feel mentally less old than I physically am. I’ve checked with the appropriate members of the Bare clan—my good aunt, Pops and my brother—and it seems that this is a common theme. Despite our varied years, none of us feels mentally our age. This has caused some kerfuffle between me and myself because there is an aspect of my physical person that is becoming rather set in routine, and when eight o’clock rolls around, that part begins to yawn and blink stupidly. Yes, we wake up early during the work week, but I feel the same way on the weekends now, too. The early-to-bed routine is in direct antipathy to the part of my brain that is, at heart, still young and ready to stay up watching late night TV.

I’ve asked this inner youth how old he is, but he not only doesn’t say, he doesn’t seem to care. What the hell does age matter when you’re young and headstrong and oblivious to consequences? All he seems to know is that he is very ready to goof around, cut up and be generally unreconstructed. At least he’s consistent, I guess.

It’s not that I don’t have physical energy. I do. I’m very ready to run and be full of action, as always, but it has limits. This isn’t something the inner youth wants to hear or acknowledge. As a result, he thinks that if we stay up, it will be like when I really was a youth, and I will just be able to bounce back the next day. It is as if he is saying, “You’re going to be groggy in the morning either way, so why not have fun tonight?” It makes me feel like a fuddy duddy, but in point of fact, I like going to bed early. I like our routine. With all my wasted days as a youth sleeping in and staying up late, it feels nice to have a set time for getting ready to go to bed.

This makes me sound old, but I’m not old. There’s no metric (except from a small person for whom age is but a misty construct) where I meet this geriatric definition, yet. Sure, I’m older than I was, and I will (hopefully) continue to get even older, but that is the only way age is part of the discussion. I don’t feel like some dottery old gaffer and even the octa and nonagenarians in the family still feel remarkably spry, so even when I am old, I doubt that I’ll feel it. 

Over the last few years, though, I’ve certainly settled down and gotten a little more grounded in a set daily schedule. That’s always good. However, compared to my mental age, my body seems to be definitely getting more set in its ways, and the contrariness of the kid within is sometimes a little hard to deal with. Never is this more the case than when the evening closes over, and the eighth hour past noon hits and the yawning starts. My pragmatic half starts listing all the things that I have to do before I can leap into the sack, and then I know it’s time for me to start making “revolutions” for bed. The inner kid, on the other hand, wants to stay up “just a little longer”. One more chapter, one more episode, one more cup of cocoa. What’s an hour between friends? This must be how my parents felt trying to get me to go to sleep when I was a shin nipper.

The funny thing is, unlike when I was that younger fellow, I actually like to go to bed early. It is one of my favorite things to do. Sliding between the sheets and reclining vertically is a blessed sensation. Few better. Each night as part of our routine, I take a cup of hot peppermint tea with honey into the bedroom, and I sip it while we watch a few episodes of our favorite comedy programs. Unlike when I was a kid, when one had not only to be in bed but also had to have all the lights out, lying down with tea while we watch TV counts as bedtime. Once the eyelids start flapping, we cut off the idiot box, and sleep takes me almost immediately. It’s actually really a wonderful sensation; tummy warm with herbal tea, comfy and snuggly and peaceful. I love it. 

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Some nights, I can honestly say that I sleep the whole night, except for a midnight trip to the bathroom or to sip some water. Other nights, I am launched from the depth of dreams into wakefulness with awful, shattering suddenness. It is usually about 11 o’clock, give or take a quarter of an hour, and it takes me several minutes to get calm again. Sometimes, I cannot cool down for a while, and I roll and tumble a bit. If the blast of energy is strong, I have to get up, walk around the house, moan a bit, check the doors, peep out the front windows, wander the halls and corridors and sip water until I feel sleepy and calm enough put the onion back on the pillow and give the dreamless another try.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this happens, but I have often wondered if my younger self thinks that I’m dozing at a party like a bore and jerks me awake so that I’m not an embarrassment to myself or others. I was rarely ever the drowsy type in my youth, except in Mr. Kugle’s history class.

There was a time, not that long ago, when we stayed up later than we do now, but when I was a kid, I used to stay up very late indeed. Most nights, I wouldn’t even start thinking about lying down until the sun was rising in the east, and then I would catch fresh hell for sleeping in until well past noon. There were whole summer weekends when I didn’t sleep at all or only very little. With no real parental oversight for my later teen years, I would regularly be awake until well past the witching hour. This was true during the school year, too, and I still somehow managed to get up, shower and dress and get to school reasonably awake. Maybe I was a zombie for some of it, but it didn’t really matter because when the sun started to set, I came alive. This led to me being called a ‘night owl’ (is there any other kind?) by people older than me who either envied or resented my ability to stay up.

I burned the midnight oil with such effect that I actually missed whole days, either because I was asleep or because I could not remember anything while I was the walking dead. I didn't operate any heavy machinery, luckily (unless a lawn mower counts), but I was likely a danger to myself and others, even so. Years later, when I ran with a crowd that was often out very late, I specifically enjoyed having camaraderie with people who, as Rick Ocasic so eloquently put it, liked the nightlife, baby. The nighttime was the right time, and I enjoyed every minute of it. At least, I think I did. Much of that time was also spent taking drink as well, so some of it is forgotten for other reasons, I’m ashamed to say.

Once married and raising kids, there was usually a bit of contention about how late I slept on the weekends, especially from my father-in-law, who liked for me to help with projects when we were visiting. He was easier on me than his own kids or than my folks were with me, but it bugged me. 

After we moved to our current house, we often stayed out with friends or wandered home late and woke up and started a new day with not very much sleep. We talk about it now with chagrin. Weekends were worse. Sometimes, we drove home from a friend’s house or a party quite late indeed. We didn’t feel weird about it at the time because we were with other adults who did the same. But then, suddenly and without notice, the circadian rhythms rebelled. One day, we went out to a friend’s house and about the time the sun was setting, we looked at each other, nodded silently, and said our goodbyes, and went home to bed. Not long after that, it started to become a habit. Now, it is just how we roll.

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Part of this newer, more mature routine has been solidified by our dogs. They are older and routine-focused too. Our pug would lay on one of our laps, snuggled and snoring for hours most days (if we let him). The beagle is a little more sensitive to the daily plan. She knows when we wake up (usually), and she knows the schedule so well that she is often wandering around in the den, waiting for us to get the message about going to bed. On Saturdays, when we can afford to stay abed for a few extra hours, they require me to get up and take the two of them outside briefly before going back to lay down.

Whereas I used to be able to sleep until one and snap awake with full energy as a teen, I’m now conscious of how fast time seems to go, and so, after a little drowsing, I feel the need to get up and at least get the kettle going and the coffee dripping. I may not have made the connection before, but since our days off are limited, I like to get moving and try to make the most of them, and the dogs seem to agree.

Most weekday mornings, it takes the carcass a little bit to warm up. I have to sit up, swing my feet over the edge of the bed and reflect on life for a few moments before the motor is purring. Some mornings are, depending on the weather and the restlessness of the night before, better than others, but I’m almost always up to speed within the first ten minutes. If not, when I head outside with the pups, the chill predawn air definitely kicks me awake. Even so, I’m never fully bright-eyed until I've had my first sip of Irish Breakfast or Earl Grey, and it takes a hot shower to get me bushy-tailed. By the time I arrive at work, I’m usually full of energy and ready for the day. 

Maybe because we start so early and are so inured to it, things start to slow down a bit by eight. We are busy adults with full-time jobs, commitments, hobbies, plans, chores, pets and meals to prepare, so by the time eight rolls around again, we’re usually running on empty for the day. To me, the thought of going out with friends or a late party is absolutely beyond me. I’d almost rather stay home, not that any of our friends go out much themselves. 

Despite what the younger inner me thinks, I have come to believe that this is just a comfortable middle-aged reality. The kids are grown and independent, our days are less harried. We actually have the freedom to develop a schedule that doesn’t keep us out at ballparks or spring choral events or parent nights until all hours. There was a time when the lads were smaller, when we used to go skidding into bed, and crashed before we hit the pillow. Life was busier then. When the boys got older, we had a little more time to settle ourselves into a routine that gave us a bit more free time than we had been used to, and we still had the energy and desire to go out on the town. Now that we have evened out into this new stage of life, we’re finding that routine is really healing and helpful and that, all told, eight o’clock is the perfect time to wrap things up for the day. The inner me may not like it, but we do, and the dogs are in full agreement, so there’s little point in arguing. 

So, while eight o'clock is not a sentence, it is a sanctuary. The inner youth can sulk, but he'll just have to live with it. After all, even he has to admit, there's a certain rebellious thrill in knowing that the 'late' nights of my past have finally been outgrown. Our quiet contentment is my own, hard-won, middle-aged act of defiance, and it is a compromise with that sullen lad. If I want to feel spry, I need to get rest.

As for next Valentine’s day, though, I think I’ll cook a homemade romantic dinner, or maybe, since it falls on a Saturday, next year, I’ll arrange for us to go somewhere in the early afternoon and incorporate a picnic or something else that occurs well before the sun goes down. That way, once we’re on our way back home, we can still be in bed by eight, not because we’re old, but because we have a routine that makes eight not that late.