Photo: David Lofink/Flickr CC
Three a.m. was once the time when I would scoop up my shoes from wherever I'd tossed them and head home from a dance floor or party. It was when I could finally think about going to bed. Or if I was already in bed, it was the time I could put down the book and think about sleeping.
It was my witching hour, the time to retreat, the time to rest. Not for long, though, because this night owl also likes to be awake during the morning hours. Three a.m. was the final gong for getting enough rest to get back up at eight. What I like about nighttime hours is that they seem to stretch, elongate, the minutes tick by more slowly and there's more space between them in which to grow ideas and dreams.
The phone rings at 3 a.m. one morning in my early 20s. My mother was dying. If the call had come a few hours earlier, I might have made it to her bedside in time to say farewell. As it was, the next few hundred 3 a.m. mornings are spent in waking thoughts of her and worrying about what might become of me.
Then, thankfully, 3 a.m. becomes the time for the night-time feeding, when mid-slumber hunger pangs wake the baby and then the rest of the household. And that new schedule ushers in a new era. Three a.m. is the time to wake up on alert, even if everyone else is soundly asleep.
The standard wisdom is that once the baby starts sleeping through -- in the case of our kid, at two months, practically a miracle -- you can go back to having a good night's sleep. Most parents have a different story to tell. Toddlers are notoriously restless, school-aged children have enough colds, flus, and busy minds to keep both themselves and their parents awake, and then come the teen years of going out at night.
Three a.m. is the time I wake up either to the sound of coughing, of pages turning, of water running, or doors closing not quite as softly as intended. The briefest moment of disturbance can fill a single minute with hours of speculation.
Then: the kid goes to college. Three a.m. might find me still awake, reading a book or watching a movie but mainly pondering, fretting, about the end of one phase and the beginning of the next. For her, for me, for us. Lifetimes traversed inside a single minute of contemplation.
This is followed by the tidal wave that is hormonal change. Just as unexpectedly dramatic and swooping as the previous changes of puberty and pregnancy, but altogether different.
Three a.m. is just one of all the other hours I wake up. Every hour, on the hour, during the course of any given night. Too hot, too cold, eyes open but not really awake, thinking about nothing but the anxiety of spending the rest of my life marking each nighttime hour like an unwilling cuckoo clock. Except I'm not kicking open the door of the clock. Instead, I announce the hours by either kicking off all the covers, or by stealing them back. A minute is the shortest space of blank-minded discomfort and hope that I'll get 59 minutes of sleep before the next hour strikes.
The sea settles, the long hormonal storm passes, and three a.m. is just that time I wake up and wonder why I'm awake. I think of getting up, maybe calling a friend in a distant time zone. The languid nighttime minutes are spent in lucid dreams and then forgetting the dreams. Then it's dawn and the alarm is going off and we're getting up for breakfast instead.
I've been told that later in life, 3 a.m. will be the time when I need to get up and make one of many trips to the bathroom. Unless I can demonstrate great self discipline and control my liquid intake for several hours before going to bed.
Or that 3 a.m. will be the time I will awaken and reflect over the past. That sleep will become more, not less, restless in that stretch before the Big Sleep.
But there's time between now and then. 
Photo: Antonio Rù/Flickr/CC
A couple of weeks ago, after a joyous party thrown by our daughter as her official entry into the heady world of the 20s, we all go out dancing. I scoop up my shoes at 3 a.m. and walk home in my stockings. The cold sidewalk feels like a balm against my burning feet.
I wake up last night and without even looking at the clock, I know what time it is. Then I verify, like I always do, by looking at the clock. A creature of habit, in a way.
It's 2:49. Look at that! It's not even 3 a.m. yet!
I've got lots of time, so many hours of dreams and thoughts to fill each of those late night minutes.
Earlier on Huff/Post50: