It all started, as one might expect, in early childhood. It was during World War II, when there were nightly blackouts, and the ambient light that used to filter through our windows from the street and the neighbors’ houses was no longer there. After trying for a while to fall asleep, I would tiptoe into my parents’ room, shake my mother awake, and whisper, “I had a bad dream. Can I rest with you?”

“Rest,” of course, meant stay there — her arm wrapped securely around me — for the remainder of the night.

Eventually, the war ended, streetlights were turned back on, and I outgrew the need for my mother’s protection.

Until some 40 years later.

I was visiting my boss and his wife at their summer home on a lake in the beautiful State of Maine. There were no street lights around the lake, of course; and the five or six other houses in the area were scattered along the lakeshore and nowhere near each other. The first night, when I settled down in the guest bedroom and turned off the bedside lamp, I suddenly learned what it meant to be totally, terrifyingly blind.

And then I saw it: a tiny red dot of light across the room, like the eye of some small, other-worldly creature come to . . . well, who knows what? But then I remembered that there was a fax machine in that room, so that the boss could keep in touch with the office. (This was pre-cell phones and pre-internet, remember.)

I thought of leaving the lamp on all night, but if I’d been found out, I never would have lived it down. So that little red light was my only beacon, my directional guide to the door in case I had to get up during the night for any reason. By focusing on it, I eventually got to sleep, with the aid of the call of the loons outside my window. (Not the crazy neighbors . . . real loons. It was actually quite lovely.)

Of course, when I returned to my urban home, I was no longer thrust into total darkness at night. But the die had been cast; I found that I fell asleep best with the light from the television glaring at me and the volume turned up full-blast. I set it to turn itself off after an hour, by which time it had worked its magic.

Then I had the nightmare. I dreamt that someone — a tall, blond man — was breaking into my apartment. I woke with a start, and the dream had been so real, I got out of bed, turned on the light, and inspected the entire apartment — the hallway door, balcony door, and every corner of every room — before going back to bed . . . leaving the foyer light on that night and every night thereafter.

But our lives change, and now I live in a rural area, though in a residential neighborhood and not on a lake. My TV is in my den, not my bedroom. At this stage of my life, the nocturnal calls of nature (no, not the loons) have become the rule rather than the exception, and my bathroom is outside my bedroom and down a short hallway. Not wanting to bang into the walls or run over the cat and risk waking the rest of the household, I need a little bit of light. And so I leave my closet light on, with the door nearly shut but not quite, and the light on my phone guides me the rest of the way.

At least, that’s my excuse.

Okay, that last part was probably far too much information, but I couldn’t think of another way to bring this tale to a close.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Old age, on the other hand, is just a mother.

*. *. *

So, whatever the experts say about dousing all ambient light in order to gain a better quality of sleep, I ignore them. I may be the exception to the general rule, but if no one minds, I’m going to continue sleeping with my night light, thank you.

I may even adopt a teddy bear for extra comfort.

But maybe just a bit smaller.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/15/25