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Creative Nonfiction

Nighttime is a Different World

Hope Yancey
issue two.

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“You don’t know what this means to me,” my mother, Ann, said. It was Thanksgiving night, Nov. 26, 2020, and she was walking around my neighborhood with my husband and me. A few families had already put out Christmas lights. We just celebrated our first pandemic Thanksgiving, with my mother seated at the dining room table, while Brian and I were at our kitchen table. We ate like this in separate rooms, positioning our masks back over our faces as soon as we were finished with a vegetarian feast of homemade spinach balls, squash casserole, breaded tomatoes, fresh cranberry-orange relish, buttermilk biscuits, chocolate pecan pie, and the rest. Later, we did a Zoom call with Brian’s family.

The grateful words my mother spoke were not about the comforting taste and aroma of the food, which she helped prepare. Her gratitude, as she explained, was for simply being outside at night to enjoy the night sky and her surroundings. It was, she said, something she had not done in ages. I pondered this, struck by her admission about an experience I often took for granted. As I thought about it, though, her comment made sense. 

My mother had been widowed a little over 10 years at the time of our walk. She lives alone in an apartment. She doesn’t have her own front yard anymore to stand in when she wants to stargaze. The reason might be personal safety, a preference for daytime driving (or driving restrictions), reduced nighttime vision, an earlier bedtime, a combination of these things, or something else, but many older adults do not go out in public at night. Except, perhaps, under special circumstances. Clearly, this was an occasion because of the opportunity it created to be outdoors after dark without concern.

In late fall 2021, my thoughts returned to the subject when Brian and I drove neighbors approximately my mother’s age to an evening concert at a local Greek church. We listened as one of them brimmed with enthusiasm for the holiday lights on a house only a street over from ours. Surprisingly, it was the first time this neighbor had seen them. “You can just stop here – we don’t even need to go to the concert,” my neighbor said with a laugh that belied the fact she was almost serious.

I’ve watched, too, on an October evening in 2023 at dusk as chimney swifts circled and made their dive into a chimney at a school to roost for the night, before their winter migration. They’re beginning to struggle from habitat loss as old buildings whose tall brick chimneys they seek refuge in get torn down or remodeled, and vanish from the landscape. 

Of course, not all the best things that enliven the night have happened in fall and winter. Just as there are different seasons of life, like the one my mother and my neighbor are presently in, there also are distinct noteworthy experiences during each season of the year. One of the most fantastic nighttime phenomena I’ve seen occurred in late spring, tending toward summer, a different kind of light display. In May 2019, Brian and I made the trip from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Congaree National Park in Hopkins, South Carolina, to witness certain fireflies that are a fleeting presence there in spring. We drove through the darkness to the remote location, arriving with a sliver of time to see the flashy insects before park rangers shut down the viewing area as thunderstorms closed in. Cautionary weather announcements punctuated the stillness of the woods, where the fireflies went on with a show that would’ve outshined any Christmas light spectacular. The bugs turned on their synchronized lights like a precision dance team kicking in unison, or pairs of artistic swimmers moving harmoniously. According to the park’s website, visitors come from throughout the country for this event. I heard there’s a lottery system in place now to see the fireflies, so I’m glad I saw them when I did. 

Nor are the experiences of night confined to the visual. They’re auditory, too. There are the owls in the trees I like to listen for. Sometimes, I hear them before I see them perched in a tree awaiting prey, or swooping across the yard, or a neighborhood street, with their expansive wingspans. Other times, I don’t see them at all. I only hear their calls, imagining their locations, how many there are, and what they’re saying to each other. Or perhaps try to decipher the messages they’re sending to me. 

Freight trains. There’s a garden and attached coffee shop in Charlotte that’s open to the public until late at night. Sometimes, I’ve heard the sounds of a passing freight train on the tracks just beyond the garden’s boundaries. Passenger trains. How many Amtrak trips have I taken by now that required me to be at a train station in the middle of the night? 

Nighttime experiences can even be olfactory, like the smell of coffee. That last, late, almost forbidden, cup you know will probably keep you awake all night, unless it’s decaf. 

I know that one day the nighttime may be closed off to me, too, as it might be for you. I think of what I would miss if I never went out at night. So, for now – while I can – I seek with all my senses its beauty and mystery before they are foreclosed to me. Nighttime is a different world, one not everyone has equal chance to enter. I stay open to the possibility of beauty and mystery in the dark. Now, I see the darkness of night in a new light.