Waking in the Middle of the Night - Joyce Roschinger

Waking in the middle of the night, I think about work, about my elderly parents growing older in a house slowly falling apart around them, about my writing, that I will never be able to write a novel, a short story, a poem.

That's when I get up, make a cup of tea and sit at the kitchen table and read. A story by Chekhov, another story by Nabokoh and suddenly I am in another place and time... I overhear a small group of men talking about love in Chekhov's story "On Love" . Later I see the lovely icicles and feel the the winter sun in Nabokov's story "The Vance Sisters". That's when it begins. Sleep comes in slowly like low lying fog. Soon it settles in all the peaks and valleys of my mind.