I woke up early this morning for some reason.

My car broke down yesterday out on the mail route…a pulley on the AC compressor failed and what was a low hum turned into a dull roar, then a mighty grind…and eventually, right before I gave up on driving it anymore and parked it until it could be towed and repaired, kind of a roaring, ticking, squeaking and squawking sound.

It sounded like the thing that happens right before an ending.

So Jenny helped me get the little Toyota truck, and I finished the route in it.

Then last night, we dragged the camper cover out of the weeds behind the woodshed and put it back onto the truck so the mail would be under cover while I used the Toyota to run the route for the next couple of days.

So I guess I’m still in “FIGHT” mode….gotta outrun the Wooly Mammoth, gotta get the car fixed.  Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep.

I really don’t know.

Jenny came out of the bedroom for a moment to check on me…momentarily…it’s about 4 AM so none of us really needs to be up.

I don’t need to be up either, but I am.

Sparrow was awake, too, and when Jenny walked by me to go back to bed, she said, “Did you ever notice her arm movements when she’s laying on her back?  It looks like she’s falling off a building…”

Windmilling and moving, clutching at the air around her like it was a blanket to grab before sliding off the bed…going somewhere new and strange in her dreams.

Where is she going to? And maybe more important…where the heck did she come from?

Now, the literal-minded folks without the need for whimsy might say, “Well, of course you understand where babies come from…don’t you? My gosh, it’s a scientific fact…the complex union of sperm and  egg. YES!!! YESSSSSS!!!!   I’m talking about a ZYGOTE!! Yeah, well…sure…a zygote becomes a baby later…but right now, I’m talking about a ZYGOTE. That’s where it all begins….a fertilized egg…a beautiful creation known as a ZYGOTE.”

It all sounds so romantic….”zygote”.  There’s something lyrical about that word.

I think there’s more to the story than just mechanics.

We don’t need to go into that side of the story.

But “falling off a building”?  Where did that image come from?

Remember Michael Jackson holding his baby over the balcony? That wasn’t universally recognized as being an expression of good parenting skills.

People didn’t like that.

We don’t do stuff like that with any of our children…or anybody else’s children, either, for that matter.

So I don’t know where Sparrow would have picked up any memory of falling.

We’ve “got her back”…we don’t let her fall.

Maybe she’s remembering falling out of heaven for a while? Maybe she’s in that interim period where she still remembers something that I’ve forgotten long ago?

Maybe her “stork sling” slipped a little on the trip over to our house? Maybe there was a little bit of turbulence on the ride over?

(I’m kidding about the stork thing. Four children in, I should have a more coherent idea of where babies come from than thinking about the stork or a cabbage patch.)

Maybe we’re all just flailing a little…slightly remembering something but never seeing it clearly enough to really understand?

Maybe we don’t really want to remember?

We’d have to be a whole lot nicer to each other if we never lost the memory of our connection to God.

That’s a big responsibility.

Who needs another responsibility?

Not me, that’s who.

I never fell off nothing, as far as I remember.