First thing in the morning

My dream morning grants me sleep until I awake on my own. Opening my eyes and grabbing my laptop without leaving my bed, I sit and write, uninterrupted. 

There's something about that moment. Ideas stir, sharp and fresh. The details of the day have yet to burrow into my brain. I've made no foolish choices that I need to regret. I have no sleepiness I need to suppress. 

Rare, this type of morning. Near fantasy. Reality finds me going to bed late and getting up with my family. They need socks and breakfast and homework papers signed, so I step away from my interior life and into the kitchen. Coffee it is. Order it is. We are packing lunches; we are preparing for the day; we are on schedule.

Once I'm up and going, I find it hard to resettle into the easy place of ideas. I walk through the house and shut off the lights; shut off the TV. I return to my room, or maybe sit on the couch with my laptop and a blanket, and in the first of ironies, work myself back to a relaxed state. Sometimes I forget that this is my goal and I check email and social media sites. The distractions worm their way into my work, and now I'm fighting not only the caffeine and the household chores, but the desire to connect with people. This is the second irony: in order to connect with people as a writer, I have to limit my time connecting in easier ways.

Some days I press. Other days I waste. So the day begins.

This is my third post about my favorite places to write. The list came first, then a discussion of my house, empty.

Quick thoughts this morning

1) Maybe morning isn't the best time to write a blog post. What have I done that's worth talking about before 9 a.m.?

2) The calendar says January 3rd, but the actual new year starts today. All calories eaten over the weekend, all slackerly behaviors and general unmotivation, are hereby placed in the 2010 vault. You're welcome.

3) As far as resolutions go, I'll have a lot of the usual: work out more regularly, improve stewardship, invest more in the local and the creative, finding ways to act on what I believe. Still working on specifics: remember it's only (observed) Day One.

A Morning Person

Normally, my husband's alarm clock processing is pretty smooth:

1. Set alarm to play the same CD at 6:03 a.m.
2. Hit snooze a cajillion times
3. Get into the shower by 6:50 a.m.

Something went awry. The day before, the alarm didn’t go off, or he slept through it, or something, because he flew out of bed at 7:15. In his mind, he was running a whole hour behind. According to my math, it was a mere 20 minutes. Math is one of those differences between us, but I’ve grown to understand that he is a creature of routine. 

On this day, he was bashing and banging and flipping switches like he had never operated an electronic device. The clatter woke me up, and what happened next kept me up. He managed, in a bleary rage, to turn on the radio at the opening moment of “Jesse’s Girl”. He shut the thing down just as Rick was ramping up to the chorus.

Who’s going back to sleep with that stomping around in their brain? My honey, but not me. Now I’m in bed, pondering weird teenage boy expressions of angst. “She’s watching him with those eyes ... She’s lovin’ him with that body, I just know it.” Who talks like that? And what was her name? Did she have any hobbies besides Jesse?

I spared him these thoughts, but he eventually got up and into the shower. I might have drifted off to sleep, but alas, Baby Girl threw open my door. She waited for my acknowledgement like a Broadway star waits for applause. I unknowingly gave her the sign, probably by ever so slightly lifting my head. She ran in, pounced onto the bed, hugged me, and then asked me a question I have never been asked, a question that replaced the fiction of Jesse and his so-called friend and the unnamed girl:

“Mom, can I set a crocodile on fire?”

And that, friends, will wake you up faster than a cup of coffee or a song from the '80s.