Ten Million Tiny Torches
Why I'm with you in the dark, plus a brand-new, exclusive-to-Substack poem
I’ve long considered myself a morning person, but since welcoming a wee one this spring, that identity has taken on a whole new level as I’ve found myself awake at all hours of the morning, if indeed 2:00 AM could be called morning and not the dab smack middle of the night.
Many people in my life with children have described this experience before: it’s easy (and inevitable) to find yourself alone, save your little one, in the dark and the quiet (or, let’s be honest, the healthy yelling of young lungs) and feel like the only person in the world, lonely and scared, as if you have been left behind on a planet of your own, never to be recovered.
Indeed, last week, I found myself holding and rocking my little one in the wee small hours, feeling like the only person in the world. In this moment, I recall a dear friend with two babies of her own who used to tell me that when she was awake in the middle of the night feeding them or changing a diaper or swaying and singing softly in an attempt to nudge them towards sleep, it occurred to her that although she was the only one awake in her house, there were others awake in their respective homes around the world. She was physically separated from these kindred spirits, but anything but alone in her experience.
What would it look like if every soul pacing the floor at such hours could pin their location on a map for others to see? How many dots could we connect once we see ourselves in context? How might plugging in to a larger network of community impact our perceptions of being alone in such moments?
In my own middle of the night moments, I hold this truth close. If I imagine each person awake as a tiny light, the dark seems to recede a bit. Like satellites sharing a signal, I love this notion that it can be these isolating experiences that connect us to one another, like tiny bulbs strung together across time and space, serving to save us from solitary suffering.
We can find company in these quiet moments, and this kinship extends far beyond parenthood. I felt a similar sense of isolation when my dad was in hospice and each day felt terrifying and excruciatingly uncertain. I rode the subway to work, checking my phone every few moments for any news of his health, and squashed in amongst hundreds of strangers, I felt like I was outside looking in, the sole sufferer in those particular circumstances. I felt lonely and broken open and full of rage. I now see in those moments, I was never alone. Who knows how many people on that train, in that city, and across the world were going through the same thing?
Back in 2021, I went to see Jason Isbell in concert at the Wang Theatre in Boston. For a couple of years at that point, I had been in therapy working to treat the OCD that I have lived with for many years. Therapy sessions felt non-judgmental and supportive but from time to time when I was in public, I’d feel the heaviness descend. I felt strange and isolated and sure that there was no one else suffering in this way.
In the balcony of the Wang, I felt that heaviness creep in. I was a fraud, I told myself, disguising myself as “normal”, but underneath, I got pulled and twisted around by the beast that is OCD. I didn’t belong.
For whatever reason, I remembered that approximately one in forty people live with OCD, and based on the seating capacity of the venue, there were more than eighty of us with that shared experience. My shoulders softened, and I felt soothed discovering this silent truth. I was in good company. One of my favorite songs, Be Afraid, was on the set list that night, its lyrics stuck in my soul:
And I don’t think you even recognize the kid in the wings
And I don’t think you even see her in yourself
She looks to you for what to do with all her delicate dreams
But you’re too terrified to be of any help
Be afraid, be very afraid
Do it anyway
Do it anyway.
I stood and sang in the warm dark of the theatre, and instead of fears, I felt friends.
We can find company in these quiet moments. It’s not about watering down our experience, but anchoring ourselves in the ocean of others with shared experiences in order to weather the storm.
***
It’s 3:00 am and I am pacing an ever-growing infant in my arms, doing my best coax them to sleep (poetry, songs, and whispered sweet nothings are all on the table at this hour). The white noise machine sounds like the ocean, and I imagine waves crashing on a beach, light and foamy over the heavier depths below. My tired eyes lovingly look over each framed photograph on the bookcases, each snapshot pinned to the refrigerator. I see the faces of my sweet circle, some whose hearts still beat, some who have long ago taken their last earthly breath, all beloved.
A Buddhist metaphor for life and death depicts the ocean as the ground of all consciousness - all life is unified and arises from its waters. As human beings, our lives appear as individual droplets that spray up from the depths, hovering momentarily above the surface before returning to the water below, when we die and return to the source of all that is.
Looking at the faces of my sweet circle, I feel a swell of heat and light in my heart, not unlike the warm dark of the theatre. I am not alone this night, nor ever. I am connected in more ways than I know to everyone I know, and those I don’t, from centuries past and lifetimes to come. How blessed I feel to be in this ocean with all of you reading this now, perhaps from your own dark homes, each of us savoring these moments when we get to dance together, skimming the surface of the water, enjoying the heights we reach before falling ever so spectacularly back into the sea.
Below is a poem I composed in a small stretch of quiet after putting my sweet babe to sleep this morning as all these thoughts about isolation and connection swam in my head and heart. Grateful that poetry has always tended to creep into corners of the day (and night)…
Untitled Poem
The sun will not show herself for hours, and I -
feeding my little one,
my heart made manifest outside my own chest,
the newest constellation
in a honeysuckle-scented soon to be summer sky -
am thinking of
am missing
you.
*
Have you felt alone at sea?
Do you, just now?
*
Many times in the midnights
I’ve awoke with fear
heart tight and hard
drenched in sweat
certain I am alone,
that I am nowhere,
pulled into the night itself,
made mist in the midst of it all.
*
Have you ever doubted your direction,
been driftwood before dawn?
Do you, even now?
*
Do not fret; I will be your compass.
*
Would you lift your voice in song with me
carve out a call and response
as we sit with the last of the linen colored moon,
and in the space of an inky night,
light the
ten million tiny torches
reflecting
reconnecting
rescuing each of us from the myth
that we are alone?
*
I want to call you to tell you I love you
that you aren’t alone in your wee hours vigil
to make you know just how many of us keep watch at these hours
and
if not hold you in my arms
(at least)
water your heart with the hope that you are ok
wrap you in wireless love
waves reaching out and in
with wet welcoming hands
in the unspoiled soft stretch of an early June morning.