A Difference Of Day And Night

Over the course of our thirty three years ( this week) of marriage ,we have designed and built more homes than most. In all of those homes I have always had a vision for just how I planned to use each room, just what furnishings would occupy which corners, just where all my treasures ( "another man's junk") would reside, colors, patterns from the time the rooms were pencilled on my drafting board. Our present home held the one exception. The developer had a "sun room" area on the back of the house. We chose to enclose this and give it "four season" usage, but having had no space like this in any of our other homes, I really imagined maybe we'd look out into it from our great room to the views through the many windows out into the backyard fields and trees.

It wasn't until we moved into this home that we discovered that this "sun room" is in constant use. It is roomy and comfortable and the windows on three sides of it offer cooling breezes and the views we anticipated. Here resides the "Mecca"...the toy stash the grandbabies migrate to within minutes of entering our front door. The bird bath and feeder are situated on the deck not six feet from the fingers tapping this posting, and birds come to eat and sing and preen apparently aware that we won't harm them despite our closeness. This is the room that I virtually live in. The home of my sweet little, red, Dell laptop, always blinking it's cheery blue lights at me. It's where I do my Bible study and day dream. It has been a sweet surprise to realize how much of our days are spent in this space.

But I think the sweeter surprise may be it's transformation in Spring and Summer nights!

The idea of "Sleeping Porches"is thought to have it's origin on the plantations where children would sleep on the upper porch "galleries" to escape the steamy nights of Southern summers. In the late 1800's and early to mid 1900's, with the invention of screening , Doctors urged sleeping in fresh air as therapy for people suffering from TB and respiratory problems. People began to build homes with "sleeping porches"...screened in rooms with multiple windows to provide maximum cross ventilation. If you drive through old neighborhoods, you'll recognize these appendages to front or back upper floors of many vintage homes.

There is nothing more magical than sleeping in my sunporch turned "sleeping porch" on a moonlit night. The moonlight floods in the windows and everything outside is so clearly visible. I love laying there watching the clouds swim across the "midnight blue" ( that was a favorite Crayola color) skies. The moon hides behind them and then pops out like a giant flashlight being turned on my face. The breezes are cool and fresh and make sleeping in any other room seem so confining to me. I almost hate to fall asleep it is so beautiful and sometimes I cannot help myself. I get up and wander to the windows to get an even better view of it all. It seems as though it's just me and God....and all the little animals I have sometimes seen skittering along the back hill.!Rabbits play, a huge skunk waddles on the sideways slant of the back hill, the occasional possum and woodchuck scurry faster than their odoriferous friend.(We can always smell him before we see him out there!) One night I had the strong sense that someone was out on the back deck and turned on the light to find two HUMONGOUS raccoons feasting on black oil sunflower seeds at the bird feeder. I haven't seen them but I know there are deer out there as well. I hope to catch them, maybe on some full mooned, snowy night NEXT winter. And there are all the sounds of the night. The frogs singing in the wetter areas of the fields, and the crickets, and what causes those little sudden outbursts of bird squawks? Bird nightmares ? The reality of a predator stalking them in the night? As tired as I might have been when my head hits the pillow, the magic of the breezes and moonlight passing through the open windows always serves to refresh me enough to watch and smell and listen for alittle longer before closing my eyes. It gives such a strong sense of peace that I find I sleep better, more deeply....and sleep is a great gift.

I have a lovely little "vest pocket" garden below the sun/sleeping porch. It has my favorites, lilacs, Rose of Sharon, peonies, ferns....I think maybe I should plant some "Moon Flowers" down there this week.

"On my bed I remember You;

I think of You through the watches of the night.

Because YOU are my help,

I sing in the shadow of Your wings.

My soul clings to You;

Your right hand upholds me."

Psalm 63:6-8