Prisoner 205 and the Midnight Chirp

Is it fall back or spring forward? I can never remember, and it shows. At 2:00 AM - honey, it shows. I know it’s on one of those days when responsible home dwellers religiously get the step stool and wander around replacing batteries in their smoke detectors, dealing with the chirp that somehow finds every nerve from your jaw, to your neck, shooting straight up into your brain. Whoever came up with that specific, eye watering noise was either highly under paid or sadistic as hell. I’m going with sadistic as hell. 

As I lay on my side, curled into a ball, my index finger and thumb are pinching the bridge of my nose hard. I mean hard. Every sphincter that I am supposed to have under my control has somehow become possessed, something that happens after the age of 50, and has gained a mind of its own. If nothing changes soon, I’m going to wet the bed.

You see, I’m laughing. No, I’m not just laughing; I’m gone. The kind of laughing where breathing becomes optional and snorting, apparently, does not. I could not recognize any sound coming out of me if I wanted to. And he was almost back. NOT GOOD! ABORT! ABORT!

But I digress. Let’s get back to the damn smoke detector. 

You know the quiet, the kind that envelops the night, long after even the owls have gone to sleep. It’s the kind that reminds you there are still hours of potential sleep left, a damn miracle if your day starts at five. That quiet is reverence, especially to a post-menopausal female that can’t decide if even the sheet is too much, all the while trying to sneak my ice cold toes gainst my husbands feet just to warm them. Who am I kidding? I do it for the torture, which leads me right back to the sphincter issue.

Heavy sigh.

We both hear it; I know we do.  Perfectly wrapped, one leg hanging out the side of the bed, my pillow safety net tucked around me. There it is again. 

Chirp.

He knows. The scales of responsibility have been tipped so far to one side for years that the smallest of chirp at 2:00 AM only means one thing; get your ass up and take care of it. You - yes you. The guy who ‘works from home.’ The husband who can’t, for the life of him, cook a decent meal, throw a load of clothes in the laundry, or stop using the electric razor to cut his hair when his wife suggests that looking like Prisoner Number 205 in the county jail may not be his best look. 

But I digress. Sorry. I have my own cross to bear. Yes, at 2:00 AM, after working a twelve hour day and a gentle alarm going off in three hours to the notes of ‘bird-song,” I have my own demons. But, by the heavens, this will not be one of them. 

So I wait, holding still as he grumbles out of bed, throwing off his CPAP mask so that it hits the wall and mumbling some choice words under his breath. I was always amazed, and yes, even a little impressed by the combination of foul words he could put together at the ripest moments. This was one of them. 

Bang! 

My brained tries to process a sound I was not expecting. Garage door opening, closing. The sound of the metal legs of the stool squeeking against themselves due to lack of use. The sound of heavy feet stepping up…maybe. 

Bang!

Absolutely not. 

It’s amazing what your mind conjures up when laying in a darkened room with what turns out to be the five-year-old child who has possessed my husband responsible for dealing with the overwhelming, earth shattering, quantum-calculating job of pulling the 9-volt battery out of the detector.  

Sweet baby Jesus, I used to love those batteries, which my father hid from the hands of his children, and rightly so. We would sit, passing it between ourselves as we completed the circuit with our wet tongues. When you’re small, electricity across your tongue can be pretty exciting. 

But again, I digress.

I hear the sliding door open. Why is the sliding door opening?

Chirp!

What? 

Then, I hear it close and the shuffling of Prisoner 205 as he first has to find his mask, second, detangle it from the slider he threw, rearrange it back over his head before he flops back into bed so hard that I actually bounce up and down. Yes, I actually bounced up and down. 

But there it is. The post-night owl quiet slowly seeps back, circling the room. Was that painful? Absolutely. Was there any room for, oh, I don’t know, grace? Absolutely. Was it over…?

Chirp!

Distant but there. 

What? 

I hear the heavy sigh beside me, and the realization shoots up my spine like a live wire. Like a 9-volt battery to the tongue. 

Oh, no. He didn’t. 

Of course he did.  

Apparently, after the detector was knocked off the ceiling with the broom - which, by the way I found the next morning over the deck as well - Prisoner 205 threw it over the deck, over the fence, over the ditch that sits on the other side and into the gentle downward sloping canyon filled with sagebrush and rabbit weed. 

I hear it. He hears it. The heavens could hear it. 

I slowly drag my fingers to my nose with the hope that pinching it will stop me from laughing. I don’t move. I sure as heck don’t breathe as he, once again, throws off the mask and shuffles past the foot of the bed. It’s a half-mile walk around our row of houses to get to the trail. Another half-mile on the trail to get to the sagebrush symphony being conducted in his honor, and then the mile back. 

It’s just that good. A nocturnal treasure hunt if you will.

Looking back, those midnight tantrums, or possessions were the cracks in the foundation showing.  We laugh because the alternative is crying, but we also laugh because it highlights the sheer absurdity of the scripts we try to keep alive. 

The message that sticks with me after all these years, now that my smoke detectors are hard wired or I can’t remember the last time I pressed my tongue to a battery is this: 

Walk away and appreciate your sphincters while they still work.