"Ma Petite Chouette"

I’ve never been much of a sleeper. Even as a child I never slept through the night. Despite my mother's best effort, she was unable to attain a “normal” sleep schedule with me. My mother used to call me her “petite chouette.” It means “little owl” in English, but I preferred the way her French tongue clung to those two words. She’d make up little French lullabies to try and rock me to sleep, eventually she’d nod off and I’d remain peacefully awake in her arms.

The older I got the more consistent these midnight hours became, as if I had become friendlier with the moon than the sun. When I was little my mother said I would play pretend under a flashlight and sometimes she’d poke her head into the room and I’d finally be sleeping, flashlight still in hand. Once she told me she went through more batteries than band aids back then. Eventually though I migrated to the little velvet couch my mother kept tucked in the corner of the sunroom. Sometimes I’d make a hot mug of tea, or warm lemon water and just sit, in the quiet of the dark.

I learned everything I know between the hours of 12:00am and 4:00am; learned to knit, to read, to draw, but most importantly to write poetry. The thing I loved about poetry was that it seemed to align so beautifully with the way my brain and body functioned. It was like the perfect pairing to my insomnia, my most profound thoughts emerged while everyone else slept.

When the portable CD player came out my mother was first in line. She stocked the vintage wooden shelves by the velvet couch with poetry discs of every era. I’d find myself in the early hours of the morning reveling in The Poetry of Maya Angelou and Jack Kerouac’s Blues and Haikus. Sometimes I’d fall asleep on that couch, notebook opened, pen in hand, just as I had when I was a small child. Most nights I slept two, maybe three hours before my mother would wake me up, with just enough time to catch the bus.

I was bad at school. Usually, I fell asleep and because I was sleeping my way through class I would end up at the principals. I failed tests and pop quizzes, was too tired for extracurricular activities, and never really found a core group of people. Nobody wanted to be friends with the weird girl who could barely take notes in class. I didn’t even want to be friends with the weird girl, and I was the weird girl.

I remember crying a lot in the day and smiling a lot in the night, as if the darkness somehow swaddled me up in a blanket of safety.

I never intended to go to college after I graduated, in fact I was planning to drop out as soon as I turned 18. School had proven to not be for me, and I thought I’d suffered enough in that regard. I told my mother this over duck confit one evening, she continued to eat while quietly ruminating over my denunciation of societal institutions. She went to bed with no further mention of our dinner conversation, and I went off to my room to pretend to fall asleep only to become frustrated and meander out to the couch as I had done every night since I could walk.

I was deep into a new poem when my mother emerged through the doorway, wrapped in her satin robe, her hair pulled back in a sleek bun, “Ma petite chouette, I was thinking about what you said earlier and found myself unable to fall asleep.” She smiled, “Something told me you’d be familiar.” She grabbed my jacket and held it out, “Come with me,” she said. She tucked her hands into her robe pockets, the cool breeze dancing across our faces. She held my hand in hers for a long while before speaking.

“People like you,” she began and then paused. “I know it’s hard, hard to be someone who society has deemed different.”

I looked at her hopelessly, “You have no idea what it’s like to be like me, I just want to be like everyone else.”

My mother sighed, “Do you know why I call you ma petite chouette?”

I shook my head, “because owls are nocturnal, like me.”

“Well yes,” she said in agreement. She waved at me to follow her as she walked toward a large, hollow tree around the side of our house. She pointed up, “Do you see that?

“I’m not sure what I’m looking at,” I whispered.

“It’s a barn owl. The first time I ever noticed one was when you were a baby, I was rocking you to sleep, and I looked out the window and there it was. Kind of an odd coincidence I thought at first, but the less you slept the more comfort I got in knowing you were never really alone.” Her eyes focused on the tree, “You have a gift that sometimes feels like a curse, but it makes you so special darling.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Because the most beautiful things are those that learn to adapt, just look at that owl right in front of you. You’re brilliant and talented and you write stunning words in the guise of darkness before most people have had a cup of coffee. Don’t get discouraged just yet, okay?” And with that my mother kissed that top of my forehead and turned back toward the door.

My mother sat in the front row of my high school graduation. Four years later, there she was in the front row as I graduated university; and again, two years later when I got my masters in poetry and semiotics. I moved to the country with my husband after my fellowship ended in the city and a few months later my mother died of an aneurysm. It was sudden, unexpected.

My insomnia had been getting progressively worse the older I got, but after my mother passed sleep felt like a foreign entity. I found myself desperate for the days when I would curl up with my CD player on that velvet couch in my mother’s sunroom; poetry, always the twinkling light amidst the quiet of the dark.

Each evening, long after my husband was asleep, I’d arise from my side of the bed, wrap myself in my mother's satin robe and make my way toward our kitchen. My mind would wander its halls sifting through the mounds of grief until I realized the intangible emotion I was feeling was regret.

I’d never said thank you to her, for I’d only found my place in this world because she believed I could and here I was now, an established writer, married, still different but just as worthy as all my peers. I’d adapted and I just wanted her to know, I wanted to say, “thank you.”

So, I began writing, from my couch which was not velvet but still tucked in a corner so it felt like home. For weeks and months, after my husband fell asleep, I would find myself writing. Often, I would still be hunched over the keyboard as the warm morning sun overtook the black of night and my husband arose for his cup of coffee. Until finally it was finished.

A year later my poetry book became a New York Times best seller, it held the spot for 14 weeks, the longest of anything I’d ever written.

I titled it, “Ma Petite Chouette'' and on the first page it read, "To my mother, who taught me that difference could be synonymous with beauty, and adaptability, my greatest superpower. Thank you. Love always your petite chouette.”