Son to Sunrise

3:26a.m. Waking, walking to the kitchen to make coffee. The man in the living room is writing on the computer. He is my son. He hasn’t gone to bed yet. We have this splendid time in the dark and silence. We talk a bit at the end of his day, the beginning of mine. I hear the classical music in his headphones. I smile to think what would be coming our of mine.

I didn’t mean to get up this early. He didn’t mean to stay up this late. We didn’t mean to meet in the middle of the night, when the harbor is empty and the sun is still sleeping.

It’s the middle of his visit. We have no rush to accomplish so many conversational things. Before we settle in to the quiet, I tell him what I hope we can do together before his leaving. He tells me about his tradition of cleaning out his email over Christmas vacation.

I begin my work. He returns to his. We work silently, side by side, like two children in a sandbox, taking comfort knowing the other is there. He finishes up and says he’ll see me later. I think that’s a wonderful thought, a lovely sentence to move me forward into my daytime.

6:26a.m. Working. My son is sleeping. The sun the still has not begun to show its colors in the sky. Will it turn the harbor waters a magnificent teal blue? Will the sky gray with the clouds of a Chicago winter sky? Will it have the lavenders and pinks that stopped for minutes yesterday morning?

I think of the boy who came into the world with so much promise, how once I never could have imagined this night.

From son to man. From possibility to glorious sunrise.

−me strauss Letting me be

Into the Future

On the threshold, finally, I see a new tunnel.

This one’s not dark and black. The light is throughout it not waiting at the end. It’s filled with the vision of positive possibilities.

I’m filled with wonder at the mere glimpse of what could be.

This morning I take a step, walking into my life as I would write it. My future is mine as I would describe it.

−me strauss Letting me be

One, None, Either, Both, or Another

Sitting on a concrete wall across the street, I eat lunch and watch clouds in blue, blue sky on the side of mirrored building. It’s a moving picture in living color, a silent movie that nature and man unwittingly conspired to make. This particular plot would never turn out exactly the same, nor would the audience come together in the same way. As I look around, I think that might be a good thing for all of us.

Lost in my thoughts of clouds and my cloud of thoughts, I wonder what Joni Mitchell, who saw both sides, would say right now. I feel like Alice, on the wrong side of the looking glass. Each square offers a glimpse I can see, but not experience. Still I’m here, aren’t I?

I put my lunch in the bin and move to place on small patch of city grass under a small city tree. People walk between my glorious view and me. I don’t really mind. The movie has become a stage play, and they’re characters meant to add context and color. My, how they do.

They don’t notice me, noticing them. Except for one.

A man with shining eyes and dark hair sits in the grass a few feet from me. He readies his camera. His mind is working, seeing, playing with ideas.

I ask, “Do you think we’re more like the reflection or more like the clouds?”

He smiles and says, “We get to pick − one, none, either, both, or another − don’t we?”

I knew that he and I would be friends for life.

I picked every answer. So did he.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Sunrise Coming

I'm at my keyboard. Music is playing. The sun has been down for hours. I am up hours longer than I should be. That reality touches deeply. It brings out words.

It is the magical land where life is perfect and so is the world. Silence, sweet silence, like new fallen snow softens the blows the day has dealt me. Little things fall and evaporate, turning smoky without no sign of flames.

The heartbeat of the world, like my own, slows. Flowers are sleeping. Roads are open. The lake is black with stillness, reflecting only the moon's coolness and a faint mist. The stars are out and watching over, with the angels, seeing to my keeping.

I know I cannot move a rock or build a building in the darkness. I can rest, unafraid that I am leaving something untended, uncared for, needing to be done. I am free.

I feel deeper, fuller, broader, as if I might be out there with the stars – my cosmic others. It's us. I can see, feel their presence, feel my thoughts beside them, my heart among them. Their soft light is a comfort as I shed the hard light day hung over me.

Night is the dark goodness. I walk slower, but angels guide me.

Night is the quiet of my own thoughts. I sleep and write in the womb of a day not born. I wait with it, hoping for my next chance to make a difference, make a change, make a life that has meaning, as my words do, meaning that reaches into my heart and out to others

Night writing is exploring, knowing, believing the possibilities that are a sunrise coming.

−me strauss Letting me be