It’s 11:28 and I’m tired. All the good writing hours have escaped me and I am lying in bed unclothed, with a cold quilt to keep the summer sweats at bay. I feel like closing my eyes.
My brain is empty of subject, I just keep saying “write” over in my head. Write, write. I’m dead. My brain is dead. Still I continue, hoping to squeeze something from the effort.
Bah! My whole person is a sheep beh-eh-ehgging to slumber. Put me out to pasture, I will wallow in the silks until the sun rises.
I didn’t get up at six, just in case you were wondering. I got up at half past eight with no shame on my plate. I ate a handful of regret come evening time when everything I had needed to get done during the day had not gotten done. I don’t know how people get up so early. I know that it is probably great, the feeling of rising with the sun. But how do people do it day after day after day after day? Dawn comes and I am still weary from the hours I could not sleep the night before. Before the second it takes me to shut off the alarm clock is over, I am already fast asleep. Pillow on the head, praising the cool sheets on my cheek.
My Daddy got up at the ass crack of dawn for years when I was growing up. By the time I was out of bed to get ready for school, he would have already been up, breakfasted, read a couple of newspapers, and headed out for his first job of the day, the morning talk show for WYRN 1480 AM. I would listen to him on the clock radio in my Mama’s room while getting dressed for school. If we weren’t listening to him on the radio, we were listening to MIX 101.5 play “Lady in Red” like it knew that was the best song ever to get your day going.
I am so much like my Daddy. Why then can I not find it in myself to get up when I tell myself I would like to get up? The time comes around, and sleep changes my mind. I want sleep as long as I can possibly get the sweet swaddling of it.
The thing is, I know that this ability to sleep in until after eight is ending soon. My daughter, Ollie is going to be going to kindergarten in the fall. For the next seventeen years I will be waking with the worms to find myself plucked out of bed too early for my retaliating sleep pattern to kick in. The task of sending my daughters off to the early start of the school bell rings a slow dull moan in my psyche. If feels as if sleep is about to elude me for the rest of my life.
Half of me bemoans the early morning. Half of me wishes for it to knot me up in it’s bright beams and shake me til I’m wide awake and sugary sweet with love for it. At night I beg the sunrise to slap me. Morning comes and I curse the light.
There is so much to do, there is never enough time. When will my will wake up and wheel in the sunrise?
Is there a way to set your clock radio to play “Lady In Red” for the rest of your mornings alive?
Single Kingdom 