That moment, between sleep and waking....

You know that moment.
The brief time when you're no longer asleep, but you're not yet awake.
When your dreamworld and the real world briefly overlap, until you fully orient yourself to the reality of your morning.

Odd things populate that moment.

For me, it's usually sounds.

A siren might be my daughter, crying.
Or vice versa.
My neighbor wheeling his trash can to the curb early on a Monday morning, might be the sound of a far off train, or perhaps thunder.

Rain is radio static, radio static is rain...

But only for a moment, that moment that's populated by odd things.

I've never been a real deep sleeper, but have become even less of one, since my daughter was born. It got a bit worse, when she became mobile; as she regularly would pad into our room in the middle of the night. It got so I'd be listening for footsteps in my sleep.

This morning... well. Let me tell you about this morning.

I've had the place to myself the last few days, while Wendy and Fiona visited Wendy's mom. I woke up well before the alarm clock, convinced myself that I was awake for the day, and promptly fell back asleep.

We've a large dog, and wood floors. Not even realizing that I had fallen back to sleep, I heard the sound of footsteps entering my room, and opened my eyes.

Odd things populate that moment between sleep and awake....

This morning, it was an extremely tall...something.

I opened my eyes to a fleeting vision of an extremely tall woman, in a white wrap, staring down at me.

"Gah!" I shout aloud and incoherently in that moment.

The giantess disappeared, replaced by the reality of shadows and a white bath towel draped over the bedroom door.
Eventually, my heart stopped racing.
I thought about the giantess, and... was kinda sad she had disappeared so quickly.
I would have liked to have had a better look at her.

Was it really just a towel and a trick of the light?
Or was it something else?

I would have preferred the answer to be "something else", be it an apparition, or proof, perhaps, that someone DOES watch over you.


But in the time it took me to register what I saw, and holler aloud, it was over, and I'm left only with a vague longing for more,and the reminder that:

Odd things populate that moment, that moment when sleep and awake overlap.