A Song in the Night

One night last May when my mother was in her final weeks and I was always on alert expecting an emergency call, I was unable to sleep, lying awake at 3AM with anxious thoughts and a runaway imagination. I tried to reason myself into a calm state, but you know how that goes. At 3AM one’s ability to reason is generally fairly weak, and the more I tried to calm myself, the more the mental loops tightened into knots.

Gradually a sound from my open window began to penetrate the tangle of my mental gymnastics. Could I be hearing birdsong? A bird singing in the dark? At 3AM? It must be my overactive imagination… But it persisted, and I got up and put my ear to the open window. Yes, it was a bird! I recognized the song of a Gray Catbird.

Stepping into my muck shoes, I slipped out the back door to walk around our yard, moonlight dancing with shadows of branches and twigs– a calligraphy of dark and light at my feet. Despite brilliant moonlight, the shrubs were all shrouded in darkness, making it impossible to see the singer, but his music continued for as long as I walked. Even after I was back inside I could hear him as I drifted gently into sleep to the lullaby of a Catbird’s song.

By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me–
a prayer to the God of my life.
Psalm 42:8