But such has been the case in the last few days. Our oldest dog, Sadie, and I share the need for more than one nocturnal pee, so there we were: she, sniffing around the lawn for a place to squat, and I, boxer-clad and half-asleep, listening to the calm between two winter storms. It’s not unusual, depending on wind and tide, to hear the local fishing boats at the pier as crews ready for a day at the nets. The deep and sputtering rumble in the otherwise still darkness takes me back to my shipboard days with the U.S. Coast Guard. It’s one of the profusion of reasons I love living near the sea.
A Sound in the Night Recalls Happy Occasions
On this neap tide, however, it wasn’t boats on their way out of port that broke the night’s hush, but an airliner on a red-eye flight from America, breaking its cruising altitude to land over 300 kilometers away in Dublin. I keenly remember the thrill of those flights from the United States to Ireland. Pushed aloft by high winds, they invariably seemed to arrive in Irish airspace an hour or more ahead of schedule. The excitement of a holiday on the auld sod, the smell of rain and turf fires, and the anticipation of a pint and a bit of craic, combined with the jet-stream-induced speed of the trip, would make sleep nearly impossible. As I heard the engines of the plane change tone in descent that night, I smiled at the joy that must have been enveloping the passenger cabin at that very moment. It’s what brought actress Selma Blair to my mind as Sadie finally found her spot.
A Familiar Feeling for Those in the MS Community
Ms. Blair had recently written a post on her Instagram account from the dark of night, which had more than touched my heart. Rather, her words took hold of it and kept me thinking. She wrote of, and from, a place that will be all too familiar to many of us in the multiple sclerosis community. She expressed pain and fear. She shared thoughts of misery and difficulty. She wrote “I am lucky on a million counts” and “I am not dying any more than anyone.” In a moment of pure openness, she wrote, “This is just me to you. In the early hours of the morning. Cause [sic] I don’t know what else to do and I want so much to do better.”
The Darkness of the Night Can Be Overwhelming
Oh, how I know the place that Blair wrote from. In those cold and quiet moments in between waking and sleep, when I am alone with nothing but my thoughts, I am most assailable by an evil, suffocating blanket of depression that can feel endlessly dark. But then, as we all hope it will, brightness entered the post as Ms. Blair wrote, “May the silver lining surround us all. And guide us out of the darkest.”
Finding Joy in Life’s Silver Linings
Miss Sadie finished her piddle and passed me as I stood, still in the doorway, listening to the airliner as distance and the atmosphere dimmed its sound. Happiness, I resolved, was the silver lining I needed to surround me. I knew the same kind of happiness would be stirring the passengers as their plane passed me that night, about to land in a beautiful place, at a beautiful time. It’s a happiness I knew because I had experienced it myself, more than once. It’s the kind of happiness that can permeate the bleakest of nights and guide many of us out of the darkness when it does come calling. Here’s to finding your own happiness. Wishing you and your family the best of health. Cheers, Trevis
