Illusions

Last night, as I was about to take my daughter to meet with friends for a night out, I saw that my father hadn't closed the basement door after saying he would close it. A small explanation here. My eighty-four year old father lives in his own house. We live right next door. The basement door of his house looks out onto a shared patio and we come and go through it all day until he closes and locks it in the evening. Normally, he closes it around seven o'clock because he likes to go to bed early. But last night at eleven it was still open. I closed it and went upstairs to exit through his front door. He was up in the kitchen, warming some milk. How strange! I asked him why he hadn't closed the door and he answered that he had just opened it because that's what he did every day at the same hour. We had a small, fast discussion in which I pointed out that it was eleven at night and he said it was early morning. In the end, it turned out he had fallen deeply asleep, had slept extraordinarily well, and had woken up at twilight thinking it was dawn. Sheepishly, he closed the front door behind me and went to bed. This morning he was up at his usual hour.

So someone is probably thinking, "Eighty-four, huh?" Yes, my father is eighty-four but despite health problems still has all his faculties in full function. What happened to him has nothing to do with age. The same thing happened to my husband some years before we were married. At that time he was working on local boats that pull up mussels from the mussel farms along the coast. One evening he got home very tired, got into bed for a small nap, and slept deeply. When he woke up and saw the pink light in the sky he panicked. He was late for work! He got dressed and tore through the house, shouting that someone should have woken him up. He barrelled into the kitchen where his mother was making supper. His mother tried to explain that it was evening but he was still in his morning world until he entered the bar his parents ran at the front of the house and saw friends and neighbors drinking, watching television, and playing cards. He then realized his error. Because no matter how fond a Spaniard may be of spending the evening at the local taberna, he's not about to sit and play cards with a beer or glass of wine next to him at eight in the morning.

Such a mix-up has never happened to me. But I have been woken up by non-existant noises. A few times by the sound of someone calling my name. Other times by the sound of the doorbell. I would jump some clothes on, rush downstairs, open the door, and there would be no one there and no one calling me. Our minds sometimes play strange tricks on us.