The world ends every night. Most people don’t mention it, probably because it ends so quietly and returns so reliably that we’ve stopped noticing the miracle.
I notice because I always wake before the day finds its rhythm, pulled from sleep by a feeling I can only describe as dread with no return address, courtesy of Princess Amy, my amygdala, who interprets the ordinary darkness of 5 a.m. as proof that something has gone permanently wrong.
Amy is the neurological equivalent of a car alarm triggered by a leaf falling on the hood. She means well, of course. In fact, she spends approximately eighteen hours a day trying to save my life. But in the small hours of the morning, her assessment of the situation rarely matches mine. So I do the only sensible thing: I leave her to it, make coffee, and take up my position at the French doors.
The backyard has a particular quality at this hour that resists description but insists on being witnessed. The darkness isn't fully dark; it's that deep blue-grey that belongs exclusively to the half hour when the night has spent itself but the day hasn't yet committed. The oak trees are silhouettes. The fence is a suggestion. The bird feeders hang motionless, empty of visitors, patient as monks.
I stand there with my first cup of Jah’s mercy, waiting for the world to reconstitute itself. It always has, but for a moment, Amy and I wonder whether this will be the morning it doesn’t. It’s one of the few things we agree on at this hour.
A lone dove arrives first. She descends from the scrub oak before any other creature stirs and lands on the feeder platform with a soft, decisive thump. She doesn’t begin eating right away. She simply sits in the pewter light, as though appointed to verify that the backyard is still where they left it. The First Dove of Morning. Inspector of Dawns.
Satisfied with her report, she begins to eat, and her presence seems to give the others permission to follow. A cardinal appears in the crape myrtle, not wearing the vivid red of his afternoon self, but a muted, sleepy crimson, as though he, like me, needs a moment to find his full color. A chickadee arrives, then another. From somewhere in the jasmine, the Carolina wren announces herself with a single declarative note, as if to say, “I’m here!"—which is really all any of us can say for sure.
The light shifts. It begins gradually and then erupts all at once, the way important things do.
Then Breezer appears: the spokesperson for the squirrel homeowners association. Breezer of the first light is not the same Breezer who stages afternoon raids from the fence top or wages campaigns against the crow gang. This Breezer moves deliberately, almost cautiously, as though the morning were something to be handled with reverence.
Breezer follows his usual route from the oak to the fence to the feeder, but without his customary theatrical flourish. No tail-flagging. No pausing to survey his domain with that particular squirrelly expression suggesting he’s already three moves ahead of everyone else. He simply arrives, chooses his breakfast with quiet discernment, and settles on the fence post to eat.
I watch him and think about the night he's just come through, tucked into his drey with the darkness outside and the world temporarily dissolved. What memories does a squirrel carry into sleep? What, if anything, follows him out of it?
He pauses mid-meal and looks directly at the French doors; directly at me. We regard each other across the silver morning air. A moment of mutual recognition passes: two creatures who have once again made it safely to the other side of the night. Amy observes the exchange in uncharacteristic silence. I take that as agreement.
Mr. Woodrow, the woodpecker, lands in his breakfast tree with the gravitas of a judge taking the bench. He surveys the assembled company: the Dove Sisters of the Immaculate Order of Brunswick, now gathered in full congregation; the cardinal, restored to the proper red of day; and Breezer, finishing his breakfast with quiet efficiency. Woodrow delivers three measured drumbeats against the bark. The day may proceed.
From beyond the fence, a dog offers a single bark. It's not an alarm, just an announcement: I'm still here!
The light is fully golden now. The dove sisters glow in it. The cardinal blazes. Even the fence posts look distinguished. Something in my chest, braced since approximately 4 a.m., loosens by a degree or two. Amy, I notice, is begining to pace the floor of my limbic system in anticipation of something that I can only imagine.And then I see the signal that the opening act is winding down: Breezer’s tail begins to twitch. Slowly at first, just the tip, a subtle oscillation that could almost be mistaken for the morning breeze. But I know better. The twitch is the squirrel equivalent of cracking one’s knuckles, rolling up one’s sleeves, or offering the faint smile that precedes an opening gambit.
The contemplative creature of five minutes ago has vanished as completely as the blue-gray darkness. In his place is the Breezer I know best: alert, calculating, and radiating the particular energy of someone who has just had a very good idea.
He glances back at me briefly, then races along the fence at breathtaking speed, disappearing into the oak branches in a rustle and flash of tail.
The dove sisters watch him go with what I can only interpret as resignation. Mr. Woodrow delivers another measured drumbeat, which my intuitive neurons recognize as meaning, Here we go again. The cardinal retreats to the crape myrtle. The day has officially begun, and apparently, so has whatever Breezer has planned.
I finish my coffee at the French doors, watching the backyard settle into its daytime rhythms: the negotiations and skirmishes, the territorial claims and peanut politics, the ongoing saga of creatures engaged in the urgent business of being alive.
Deep within my midbrain, Amy clears her throat, which can only mean she has thoughts about the day ahead. She always does.
For a few minutes, as the blue-gray world turned golden, Amy and I were in agreement. The world had remembered how to begin again. And that, on balance, seemed to call for a squirrel causing some trouble. Life is good.
