I just couldn’t get to sleep last night. I did go to bed early, closing my curtains as others dressed up for a night out. I spoke, out loud as always, my thankyous to the beauty of the world around me, the hours of the day, the way I am still alive and well and for so much more. It can take me many minutes to complete my list. I settled with my good book and read for a couple of hours as day gave way to the dark, the precious dark, no street lights, no flashing anythings, no glow from any electronics. Just a glorious and natural dark. I realise this is rare and there’s another thankyou.

As eyelids droop and words swarm on the page, I turn off my light and courie in to my soft pillow. That’s it, I think. Morning will wake me, although even as I think this, I know it to be nonsense because I am now left alone with my thoughts, no longer inside another story but back to my own. And here, there be dragons. Over many many decades I have worked to affect this and without any success. I don’t know why. Nor does anyone else.

I bring to mind, in my wakefulness, images of all the good times, the wonderful in my life, the happy faces of my children and theirs; the moments, the adventures, the successes and the way we carved out a life in difficult circumstances, a wonderful and all inclusive life. I see faces of the students who worked with us, the randoms, the ceilidhs, the spontaneity of a Tapselteerie chaos, the way we sorted, fixed, fed, accommodated a gazillion people. I like that movie.

As the midnight hour ticked in I must have dozed off. Then I heard them. Hundreds of them and I know the call.. It took 20 minutes for them to fly by. Shouldn’t be Whooper swans, not now, I thought. They are happy in the Arctic enjoying the feeding grounds. But I am sure it was them, and their longsong, the way I could picture them in the black of night, supporting each other, encouraging each other other, shifting leadership, all that, as they cut the night in half. I heard them gone.

Then I slept.