are you home alone tonight?

Do you ever open a door into a dark room at night and flip on the lights, imagining that the sudden illumination will reveal a scary, evil man standing inches in front of you? That he's been just waiting in the dark for you to come down and meet your demise?

Sometimes I do.

Not always, just sometimes. Sometimes when Steven is working the graveyard shift and I am here alone, the sole defender of my children and my home. It is when I am alone here, at night, after all the kids are asleep that my mind wanders to the dreaded “what if's.”

What if I was laying in bed one night, sleeping, or almost sleeping, or just laying here awake. What if someone crept down the hallway, searching for easy prey. What if he appeared in my doorway. What would I do? Nobody would hear me cry out for help. But wait, Jordan might hear me, Jordan might come. Then what? What if I just accepted my fate without a sound. Would the kids remain asleep, would he leave them alone?

Okay, I know this isn't upbeat and entertaining. I don't always think of this stuff, but some nights when Steven's working I get myself really creeped out. I don't really like being home alone at night. My train of consciousness works overtime on occasion, and I have escape routes from fire, burglar, “bad guy”, half worked out. I know that if I heard someone trying to pry open the front door I'd take my cordless phone, run across the hall, grab Mitchell and hole up in Jordan and Tennyson's room. I'd tip over their dresser in front of the door to slow the guy down while I dialed 911. I told Steven this the other day, and he said "The doors are so flimsy he'd have no problem breaking through it." That really helped. Thanks Steven.

There are times when I'm half-dreaming, mostly-sleeping, slightly awake that my mind conjures up the notion that I've heard something. I lay in the dark, without my glasses on, trying to focus with my one near-sighted eye. Of course, trying to nearsightedly focus in the dark manages only to make things go in and out of focus, and the doorway looks as though it's being darkened by someones presence, and a housecoat hanging on a closet door suddenly looks like a man. One night I lay quiet for a few minutes before finally reaching out and turning the lamp on, only to breathe a sigh of relief to find my room empty. I left the lamp on for the rest of the night.

Of course the practical, reasonable part of my brain knows that the chances of something like this happening are slim to none, yet the emotional, imaginative, fantastical part of me has me getting out of bed at night to check on the kids when I hear Tennyson roll over and kick the side of the crib, because the sound could just as easily be someone opening their window.

When you're a kid (or at least, when I was one) and you'd have to leave the basement after turning off all the lights, you take the stairs two at a time to get to the “safety” of the main floor – just in case “something” is chasing you up. Old habits die hard.