WHALES and NIGHT OWLS

My mother was convinced staying up past 10 pm was criminal.

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But even when I was still young, I came brilliant-awake at 8pm, and my energy didn’t fade until 4 or 5 am. Made getting up at 6 to catch the train to NYC for school really hard.

I slept through the train ride, and all my morning classes. Not sure how I got through school. Now, decades later, 8pm is still my witching hour. I’m often up way past dawn.

A guy on FB claims to have procedures and protocols for shifting your night pattern to day. I thought about it but discovered I’m not particularly interested.

Truth to tell, I like the night for its silence, lack of mental clatter, and no one interrupting me. I get so much more done. I like it that there are no neighbors or phone calls yammering at me. I get right pissy when I’m deep into something and someone wants to call or text. I leave my phone in the other room – leave me be, dammit!.

I think we try to convert the natural patterns of our bodies to ‘regular’ hours to our own peril. We weren’t made for 9-5. Seems to me that some people are made for daybreak and hunting.

Others where built for digging and building in the day. Some are made for picking fruits and swimming in cold rivers later on when it gets hot. Or afternoon ice fishing on frozen lakes.

And some, like me, are made to keep the night watch.

When I sailed from Hawaii to California in ’84, I liked the midnight to 8 am watch. There were only two of us, so we had to be careful to determine appropriate watch hours.

We started with alternating 4 hours each, then 6. But I really liked the 8-hour span because I could dive deep into a book, or writing, or composing music or writing songs.

It paid off one morning right outside the shipping lanes as we approached Santa Cruz. It was that grey in-between time, when the sun hadn’t appeared above the horizon. The stars were gone, but dark hadn’t slid into the light quite yet.

I looked up and saw a mass of shadows in the water. BIG shadows. Whale shadows! There had to have been 20 of them. You know how they say, my heart leapt into my throat? That.

My first thought was holy moly, what if they bump or swim under and capsize us – our boat was only 31 feet, and each one of them was a good five feet longer!

They took very polite turns coming alongside, rolling over and opening their eye to peer at me peering down on them. Seeing and being seen by something bigger than your boat, through a dinner plate size eye – lemmetellya – I felt like my very soul was exposed.

After the surprise of it, and my heart rate returned from Mars, the sweetest feeling swept over me – like honey had been poured into my whole body and mind. I knew without any doubt at all that they hadn’t an iota of ill-will towards us.

I don’t know how long they were there. I think we were in a time warp. At one point I swiveled to call Skipper to come up from below and see, but when I looked back into the water, they had vanished. It was a treat just for me!

I see people who are natural night owls trying to fit into a day-oriented time system. It’s agony! Is that you? Don’t do it – make your life adapt to your own rhythms!

I believe we miss out on special, precious experiences when we try to conform. What a loss. Life is short – why pretzelize yourself into a pattern that isn’t your natural fit?

I say keep being a night owl, and let the world flow around you. You’ll ease into it and breathe easier!

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