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August 20, 2021
When my mom passed away last November, she willed me all her writing materials. The vast majority of her files were ephemera, folder after folder of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and the endless, curious notes she wrote to herself in her own form of shorthand. But also, there were her manuscripts, articles, and poems. Some I knew about, others came as complete surprises. One such example was this poem entitled "Night-Light," which she wrote about me sometime in the 1970s:
When my boy was two and three,
His lamp burned through the night.
His door was always open
So ghosts stayed out of sight.
His door was partly open,
A night-light was just fine.
Burglars, bugs remained at bay,
When he was eight and nine.
Ten! His door was tightly closed,
The night-light stayed aglow.
Two years later that went out…
He’s all grown up, you know.
My mother clearly saw my night-light as being something like a "ghost light" — a very old theater tradition where a light is always left burning on an empty stage. Opinions vary on why this is done. Some say it's to chase away mischievous spirts, others that the light actually guides them through the dark so they don't become mischievous and disrupt any performances. For me, the night-light was probably served both purposes.
I've never been the type of person who went to bed and immediately fell asleep. Even as a child, the thirty minutes or so after the lights went out and the night-light came on were used to create stories. That electric bulb would draw patterns against the popcorn texture on the ceiling, and I would pick out images, both mundane and bizarre. Or sometimes the light would be like a flickering candle, an object on which to fixate until my eyelids grew heavy enough to close. Other times, there was a practical reason for having the light burning throughout the night — like finding your way to the bathroom or reading comic books when you just weren't tired enough to sleep.
As for ghosts, well, those were a consideration as well. My mom had once seen an apparition in our house — a young, slender woman dressed in a long white dress and carrying a lantern who floated down the hallway between our bedrooms. Mom was never sure if this vision had been a waking dream or a hallucination caused by stress (she was divorcing my father at the time), but the memory of it stayed with her for the rest of her life. And so did her fascination with ghosts and ghost stories.
As I got older, I grew to share my mom's interest and my fear of ghosts was replaced by a curiosity for the paranormal. Then the night-light was not so much about keeping ghosts away, but about luring them in. After all, if the lady in white or any other specter was floating about our house, I needed enough light to see them. And not just ghosts, but pirates, monsters, astronauts, wild animals, robots, and the rest of the menagerie which lived inside a young boy's brain. Scaring myself in the near-dark appealed to the storyteller in me. After all, complete darkness is never as fascinating as when you have just a little but of light to break it apart. The glow of a night-light could trick and beguile me. I might see movement at the corner of my eye, even though I knew nothing was there. I might perceive a menacing figure crouched outside my closet, only to realize it was actually the desk chair. It's a dramatic technique still used in movies and fiction today. In the movie Jaws, for example, was the actual shark ever as terrifying as a gray fin cutting through water? Or a sudden ripple on the surface, created by the swish have an unseen tail?
To this day I still keep night-lights burning in my home, although I admit it's now more for practical and safety considerations. Still, every once in a while, it's fun to crawl out of bed, stand in the near-dark, and try to spot those mysterious things lurking in the shadowed corners of the room... and your mind.
August 20, 2021
When my mom passed away last November, she willed me all her writing materials. The vast majority of her files were ephemera, folder after folder of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and the endless, curious notes she wrote to herself in her own form of shorthand. But also, there were her manuscripts, articles, and poems. Some I knew about, others came as complete surprises. One such example was this poem entitled "Night-Light," which she wrote about me sometime in the 1970s:
When my boy was two and three,
His lamp burned through the night.
His door was always open
So ghosts stayed out of sight.
His door was partly open,
A night-light was just fine.
Burglars, bugs remained at bay,
When he was eight and nine.
Ten! His door was tightly closed,
The night-light stayed aglow.
Two years later that went out…
He’s all grown up, you know.
My mother clearly saw my night-light as being something like a "ghost light" — a very old theater tradition where a light is always left burning on an empty stage. Opinions vary on why this is done. Some say it's to chase away mischievous spirts, others that the light actually guides them through the dark so they don't become mischievous and disrupt any performances. For me, the night-light was probably served both purposes.
I've never been the type of person who went to bed and immediately fell asleep. Even as a child, the thirty minutes or so after the lights went out and the night-light came on were used to create stories. That electric bulb would draw patterns against the popcorn texture on the ceiling, and I would pick out images, both mundane and bizarre. Or sometimes the light would be like a flickering candle, an object on which to fixate until my eyelids grew heavy enough to close. Other times, there was a practical reason for having the light burning throughout the night — like finding your way to the bathroom or reading comic books when you just weren't tired enough to sleep.
As for ghosts, well, those were a consideration as well. My mom had once seen an apparition in our house — a young, slender woman dressed in a long white dress and carrying a lantern who floated down the hallway between our bedrooms. Mom was never sure if this vision had been a waking dream or a hallucination caused by stress (she was divorcing my father at the time), but the memory of it stayed with her for the rest of her life. And so did her fascination with ghosts and ghost stories.
As I got older, I grew to share my mom's interest and my fear of ghosts was replaced by a curiosity for the paranormal. Then the night-light was not so much about keeping ghosts away, but about luring them in. After all, if the lady in white or any other specter was floating about our house, I needed enough light to see them. And not just ghosts, but pirates, monsters, astronauts, wild animals, robots, and the rest of the menagerie which lived inside a young boy's brain. Scaring myself in the near-dark appealed to the storyteller in me. After all, complete darkness is never as fascinating as when you have just a little but of light to break it apart. The glow of a night-light could trick and beguile me. I might see movement at the corner of my eye, even though I knew nothing was there. I might perceive a menacing figure crouched outside my closet, only to realize it was actually the desk chair. It's a dramatic technique still used in movies and fiction today. In the movie Jaws, for example, was the actual shark ever as terrifying as a gray fin cutting through water? Or a sudden ripple on the surface, created by the swish have an unseen tail?
To this day I still keep night-lights burning in my home, although I admit it's now more for practical and safety considerations. Still, every once in a while, it's fun to crawl out of bed, stand in the near-dark, and try to spot those mysterious things lurking in the shadowed corners of the room... and your mind.
Hooray! The internet comes to the rescue in my long search to find a children's book I loved... then forgot about.
A family photo project reminded me of a road trips from my childhood and how they ultimately came to influence some of my young adult novels.
My writing was inspired in part by a children's sci fi story... even though it took me 38 years to finish reading it.
I went to Greece to walk where legends were born and found inspiration as a writer in a most unexpected place.
