By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
I will be upfront and completely honest with you. What I write about today is going to be purely for the aesthetic. I am simply going to describe to you a few experiences I’ve had as of late that are just longing for me to put them in print. I was going to say put them on paper, but I don’t really foresee you or I actually looking at this as ink on a page. But I digress. I hope you are alright with me just painting a few word pictures for you this week. I haven’t just done a blog of this descriptive manner in quite some time as I have tried to hopefully give you more substantive content, but I admit that I have honestly been longing to do one of these for quite a while, so I appreciate you humoring while I write in a way that is very near and dear to my heart.
I suppose it all started with a night that for whatever reason I couldn’t sleep to save my life. Actually, I take that back. I was very sleepy once I got to bed and then slept soundly for a few hours. Then my daughter woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I had to go and try all my motherly methodologies to get her back to sleep. It took longer than usual but finally her breathing was rhythmic, and she didn’t wiggle when I stopped patting her hind end. So, I went back to my bed. It was then when I came to the horrible realization that any sense of drowsiness had utterly left me. I lay there as wide awake as a Jack Russell after five espressos.
For some reason, I felt compelled to go outside. Now, this is very abnormal for me. I am not anti out of doors but visiting them in the middle of the night is not my normal procedure. But I went out. It was so still. It was disconcertingly still. I heard no birds. There wasn’t even the sound of crickets. The moon was big and nearly full and there were shadows but not the same kind as daytime shadows. The edges of these puddles of darkness were softer and less pronounced. The line where an object physically ended and where its shadow began was blurred. The softness of the scene made the silence more palatable. It reminded me of snow. We rarely get it but when it is falling it feels quiet and soft and this nighttime stillness felt similar. While it was at first startling, it changed from stark silence to a comforting quiet. And while it didn’t happen quickly, perhaps it was this comfort that allowed me to eventually go back to sleep.
Later this same week, it was early morning, and I was doing a few last-minute morning preparations before my daughter woke for school. I ventured out again and this time I got to hear the forests around my backyard awaken. My initial step outside was into that same aforementioned stillness. There was the faint cricket here and there but mostly nothing. As time passed though I could hear a rooster beginning to crow in the distance. Gradually small songs began to echo in the darkness. Then there were loud cries from blue jays. As the darkness faded it took the quiet along. Even shouts of disgruntled squirrels and their scampers through the canopy joined in. It was a wonder to witness the forest wake up.
On the way to school we had a mesmerizing view. Before us, directly above the road hung the massive moon. He hung fat and silver, almost distorted he was so large. Then behind us, setting our rear-view mirrors ablaze was the enormous sun as it had made it just above the trees. Ahead the sky was a cool periwinkle and behind me it was a flaming orange like a Tennessee tailgate. The diametric opposites were amazing to see, both so dynamic in their appearances. It seemed like overkill to note the unexpectedly fervent blue blossoms of the morning glories that have intwined themselves around the fences of the cotton fields near my home. There were spatterings of blue flowers wrapped around the fences surrounding cotton fields that themselves were speckled with white fluffy bowls peeking out from green leaves all set against the duality of the sky that was attempting to make a last grasp at the night and embrace the day simultaneously.
None of it was something that couldn’t be seen almost anywhere I imagine. It was simply the way that all of the elements presented themselves that just struck me as so unnecessarily beautiful that I wanted to write about them. You may or may not want to hear the excessive descriptions of a simple commute through rural Alabama. But on that day, it was all so magical. Everything was beautiful to an extent that it sat in my subconscious for many days afterwards. I don’t know what your morning commute looks like. I hope it’s spectacular because on some days, for no apparent reason, mine just happens to be.
Prose and Possibilities 