'ROUND MIDNIGHT

Midnight is not a something. More to the point, It is a something experienced. In different manners and moods by different people; but as an experience, it is surely one of our universals.

When a child, midnight is often a mission. A goal to see if you can stay up for it. It being whatever magic and mystery your curious heart has attributed to it. With young curious hearts there is always the edge of awe. The witching hour when adults somehow become and do what we're not allowed to witness during the rest of the day. Why even Santa arrives about this time, bearing witness to its significance.

Later, with adolescent hormones flowing, midnight assumes other shapes and specifics. That erotic time when the night air becomes more fragranced, and the one in your arms more lovable. It's as if the earlier hours were mostly impatient prologue. 'round midnight is when things start to happen. Important things, intoxicating things. Now, when all the world is asleep, it is the best time to be awake.

Still later -- working, married or mated, tired at the end of the day -- midnight is when you turn off the set. You need your sleep. The fragrance you detect in the midnight air is just as likely Vicks as it is Violets. But that's OK, for there are snugly memories to warm your dreams, and promising weekends to whet your appetite. If midnight is not always intoxicating, it has other charms.

For parents, midnights can take on restless meanings. As in: "Where is he with the car he promised to get back by 11?" "Who is she with right now, it's been an hour since she called in?" What once cued off-stage violins while the two of you looked up into the midnight stars, has now become the hinge of fate. My God, could our children be doing what we were doing as children!

Time happens. Life happens. Another thousand midnights happen. Suddenly -- well, really not so suddenly -- we are old. The tick of the night-time clock speaks a different language. It now speaks of time spent...time lost...time treasured. Midnight becomes less special, simply the hour after eleven. You still find the night has a thousand eyes, but yours are resting. Resting in the knowledge that time is a seamless cloth. It has swaddled you from birth, borne you through life, now gifts you with the wonder of your own soft breathing.

Before going off to sleep, it simply must be asked....! All these midnights in all these lives that have populated all these centuries -- have they and we really been nothing more than some capricious cosmic accident...?