October 7, 2016 | The sound of rainfall should lull me to sleep, like one of the preset button choices on a white noise sleep machine, but I am far from lulled.
My junior-high drama teacher was a character. She taught us how to do eye-liner so eyes "popped" from the stage. She taught us how to kiss on stage without actual lip-lock. She taught us what Stage Left meant, and how to properly Stage Whisper, and the importance of projecting one's voice to the hard-of-hearing patrons sitting in the very back row of the theater. She managed to teach us these things while controlling a classroom of very rowdy teenagers. She was known not to "put up with our guff" or let us "pull one over on her." One of the other things she routinely said was, "You are up in the night if you think . . ."
She insinuated being up in the night meant we were crazy. I can see where teaching junior high students would cause a teacher to find alternative ways of calling students "crazy". It's understandable.
When I had my first child, and found myself "up in the night" almost every single night, I began to feel certifiably crazy, and decided my old drama teacher was on to something.
Well, it's two a.m. and I'm lying here awake in my in-laws' guest room, and I find that I am feeling certifiably "up in the night".
I don't know whose big idea it was to replace the old asphalt-shingled roof with a metal one, but because of that wise guy, I'm proving my teacher correct.
It is raining. It is raining hard. The rain is playing the roof like a gargantuan steel pan drum, tapping out an intense and complicated Caribbean percussion in rhythms that force my ears to listen carefully, as if Mother Nature is disguising an organized beat somewhere within her wild downpour. My ears search the drip drip drops for a pattern. Any pattern.
The sound of rainfall should lull me to sleep, like one of the preset button choices on one of those white noise sleep machines, but I am far from lulled. Far. I am wide awake, awash in the discordant plinking chaos ricocheting above my head.
So, here I am, up in the night, decoding the hidden messages in the torrent, and thinking about my junior-high drama teacher. She was known to take unruly students by the ear and lead them to the office, saying, "That's enough out of you." I loved her for that, because I was the bookish girl on a side row, trying to learn what she had to teach. She also warned repeatedly, "Not one more comment from the Peanut Gallery." It never failed to make me smile.
I wonder what she'd have to say about this noise going on above my head. Possibly, "Can it, Mother Nature. That's enough out of you for one night." Mother Nature would listen, as we all listened to Mrs. Sanderson, and then this up-in-the-night ado could quietly fade to black. End scene. Exit Stage Left. Back to bed.
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