Disclaimer and apology: Anyone who read this blog after posting yesteray will realize my mind never caught up with the day. Misspelled words, twisted phrases, and garbled thoughts jumbled together to give a good example of a mind that remained in bed even though the body was up and moving. Thanks to my friend Donna, who sent not one, but two, e-mails to point out I was coining a new language or in error. SHE is obviously another of those from the planet of "Eyes Open, Mind Alert"!
I sleep soundly. I will sleep through almost anything except the sound of someone in need, a crying child, or my own snoring! There was a time I would have slept through all of that; becoming a mother changed that. Infants must have immediate recognition of their needs and I learned to sleep tuned in to what might be needed in the middle of the night. However, waking and responding did not mean I was fully functioning. Waking because it is time to be somewhere (such as a place of employment, school, etc.) means I don't bother to wake at all; I stumble from bed to bath to breakfast to bus without truly being awake and alert. I set everything I needed out at night (still do) and counted on stuff being where I put it as I groped my way through preparation for the day.
Dave, Helen, Belle wake and know that the day is out there, things are to be done, and light is good, noise is even better, and life is to be lived. Marc, Bett and I are difficult to wake; we awaken startled no matter how gentle the approach and bounce off walls without knowing what hit us. If breakfast is served, we are happy to eat it; if it is not served, we are content to wait. For me that first cup of coffee is as important for the warmth it brings to my hands, the aroma, and the time it buys for me is more important than the caffeine. I would be as supremely happy with tea or hot chocolate. Now you may have noticed I did not mention either Kevin or Jenny. That's because I don't know for sure, but I think they both belong to the alert members of society.
Dave bounds out of bed (well he did until his early 60's), is talking before his feet hit the floor, turns on every light in the house, needs the TV, his phone, his computer and anything else that blinks, beeps, snorts, and buzzes going on around him. Through forty-six years of marriage he has never figured out this disturbs the troll that sleeps on the other side of his bed. He slurps coffee, munches noisy cereals, and yawns and scratches with amplifiers attached to his body for optimum sound. While none of this would faze another morning person, any of the above brings him to the very brink of death every morning.
We had been married a few weeks. Light was softly creeping into our room through the drawn curtains. We were spooning with my left arm over him. He grabbed my wrist, sat bolt upright, and roared "I can't believe it!" Hair standing on end, my heart in my throat, every nerve ending screaming, I too bolted upright. "What?!?" I fully expected to see my hand hanging by a thread from the wrist it was supposed to be attached to. "You! You are wearing a ring exactly like mine!" You can imagine when I could breathe at all, I used every ounce of breath to tell him exactly what I thought of our matching rings (our wedding bands), his idea of humor, and what should be done to people who do that in the morning. He was gazing into the face of his beloved turned suddenly into Medusa.
Having married in the glorious '60's, 1965 to be exact, it was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, knee high boots, butt high skirts, and voluminous hair! Ratting was a process of backcombing the hair until it was the size of the finest of afros. The top was then painstakingly smoothed over the whole for a sleek but airy do then well laquered to keep it all in place. I was in the bathroom and had reached the point of very long hair fully ratted without any smoothing. Dave was two rooms away in the kitchen eating a crisped cereal. Every spoon scrape on the bowl, every slurp, every chew was going through me. I stomped through the apartment to confront him. "If you can't eat that quietly," I hissed, "then suck it until it is soggy!" Every syllable was enunciated carefully to make sure there was no misunderstanding.
Let me clarify here that Dave is not a sloppy, messy, rude partaker of food. It is the magnification of light, sound, sensations in my caused by the way I am wired in the morning. He is quite normal. I remember one morning while I was day-care provider to several neighborhood children. Little Gina, of the very big voice from a very small body, was hungry. Helen asked, "Where are you going?" Gina told her she was going to ask for breakfast. "Wait!" The command was given with authority and knowledge and Gina waited. As I poured my second cup of coffee, Helen heard the cup and pot rattle together and said, "OK. We can go ask for breakfast now."
Waking Marc was a study in providing the most ease into the day with the least annoyance. On cold mornings, I would heat the oven to 200 degrees, put Marc's little rocking chair near it, put a blanket in the chair and have a cup of warm chocolate ready to hand him. I would wake him quietly and bring him out to his chair. Once he was wrapped in the blanket and holding the chocolate, I would crack the oven door open and turn off the heat. I was nearby to keep an eye on him but I left him alone. He often was as gentle with waking Bett talking softly to her and not touching her to get her ready for the day. In our home, once Marc was older, Dave and Helen removed themselves early to leave the two non-morning people to bumble and occasionally rumble their way through morning. We were conscious of each other's need to have space, darkness, and silence; nonetheless, there were THOSE days. “THOSE” days indicating the times when in spite of best efforts we got in each other’s way and nastiness erupted with the violence of acid reflux.
When I owned my own typing business contracting for work out of our home, I could wake slowly after Dave left for work, get the kids off to school, and then type my way through the day. When I had to go back into the world of business in the mid 1980's, I had to function to get to a very early bus and actually make my way into downtown Minneapolis without being a danger to myself or others. I usually napped on the bus. I arrived near my workplace two hours early because of the way the bus service from our home to downtown was scheduled. I would make my way to Woolworth's, long since gone, and have coffee, read or do my Bible study, and maintain silence until it was time to go to work. Peter's Grill was another favorite place -- they used the heavy crockery dishes of places remembered from childhood. The aroma from the kitchen, hot coffee in my cup, and the far-away clatter of crockery was soothing somehow.
Having survived the scarring of mornings with me to this point, Dave occasionally brings a coffee offering to the troll he lives with. There he stands beside the bed, softly calling my name until I wake enough for him to hand me the coffee. Then he turns and leaves the room. On one side of the door is the troll clutching the coffee in a dark room with baleful eye cast at the light showing around the edge of the door. On the other side is Dave with all his light and sound going on around him knowing he has minimized his danger for at least one morning.
Don't think I haven't tried to change. God looked at morning and knew it "was good". He also created people to work hard during the day, fall asleep once it was too dark to see, and wake well-rested when the sun peeked over the horizon. He never planned on shift work which is like sand to an oyster on every human cell in a human. He never planned on alarm clocks going off before it was time to be up and moving. He planned on people waking in the slow dawning of a day and moving in tune with nature. God did not want us sleep deprived and rushing at top speeds before we were fully awake. He wanted us to have a full day of work with lots of time to spend with Him. He never planned on artificial light to turn waking hours topsy-turvey.
Don't you dare get me started on Daylight Savings Time. God has no clock. It is the twisted mind of man that keeps adjusting the time to rob us of an hour in the spring and give it back in the fall. The sun doesn't work on a giant battery that makes it run slow when the battery is wearing down; leave it alone it does it's job all by itself. Didn't I tell you not to get me started? All the things we do designed to make us function prior to sunrise are perversions created by man for man.
All of this came to mind because this morning, 30 January 2012, Dave and I could sleep until we woke. He has the day off. My alarm went off and I managed to find it and stop it. I didn't wake to do it. I was sleeping really well. Mr. Bright Ray of Sunshine got up! He made noise in the bathroom, but I was sleeping through it (I can just tell you he was making noise because he was UP). The next thing I know he was calling my name sharply with a tone that implied frustration, worry, and urgency. He wanted the battery container because our programmable thermostat was not working (because of dead batteries – just like me in the morning!). I was up without thinking, my head was roaring, my body was sensing extra chill in the air and I was on the move. I grabbed batteries from the basket of Wii supplies for the granddaughters, and said, "Here!" (Marc I have been paid back in spades for a particular morning from your early teens when I brought you awake with one rudely phrased bellow!)
The torture was not at an end. Dave now expected a mind fuzzed and glazed from startled awakening to know what times we have the blitzkrieging thermostat programmed for temperature changes as well as knowing what the temperature settings should be. Since he was holding his nose two inches from the thermostat to program it, he did not notice my slow progress toward him with blunt instrument in hand. I tried to give him settings. I have no idea if they are the correct settings -- we will find out when we begin freezing earlier than we wish or wake thinking summer arrived. I took great satisfaction is hissing that the battery container is where it always is but his lunch box for work was covering it. I crawled back into bed, covered up and waited for warmth and comfort to settle the nerve endings that were like frayed electrical wires.
Not to be. My befogged mind came to grips with a 9:00 AM appointment Dave had and my promise to make waffles for breakfast. Not frozen toaster waffles, not instant mix waffles, mix-from-scratch-know-what-you're-doing-beat-the-egg-whites-into-peaks waffles! I got up.
That is when I discovered my waffle iron wasn't where I keep it. Remember I said I plan things out the night before and life goes well; no previous night planning and the pieces of the morning just won't fit together. It is sort of like trying to do a picture puzzle with the pieces of two puzzles mixed together.
I keep all heavy electrical appliances in the floor level cupboards of which there are ten. This meant that I had to open each door go into a squatted and bent double yoga position while reaching far into the cupboards. There were the small roasters, the pizzelle iron, the ice cream maker, the large crock pot, the pasta machine (not electric but heavy), the fondue pot, the malt maker, the large and small George Foreman broilers. All were the wrong colors. The waffle iron is white with a blue grip. On my second time duck waddling around the cupboards, I found a white electrical . . . sandwich maker I didn't know we still had! Dave came out to help look; we came up empty. On the third time around, I found it! It had tipped over behind the ice cream maker and large crock pot. I brought it out and plugged it in.
I carefully followed the recipe double checking all my additions. I whipped those egg whites to perfection and folded them gently into the batter (in spite of wanting to pound to pieces anything animate or inanimate that moved). Dave was very still in the living room. By the time I had the first waffle cooking I realized a breakfast that is a calorie and carb splurge for us includes eggs and sausage or bacon. I had prepared neither! So, saved from ourselves, we ate our waffles, buttered (well, margerined) and lite syruped before Dave left for his appointment. I was able to freeze two full waffles which will make 4 half-waffle breakfasts which will go with sausage or bacon some morning before work for Dave. The cleanup is still sitting there taunting me to get busy. If I don't turn, I can't see it and it won't bother me until after I get back from grocery shopping.
I am out of sorts, tried to scald myself in the shower but succeeded in getting the water moderated before I completed the job, have jumped every time my mantle clock has chimed the hour in spite of that being one of my favorite sounds, have fallen over the dog twice, and otherwise shown that this day is beyond recovery for one from the slow to awaken set.
When I return from grocery shopping, I will turn to my Bible study to see if God has some wise words for a soul that feels like jello on a vibrating fat reducing machine. I bet He has them. I bet He shows me. I bet He gifts me with something wonderful. In fact He has. We went to buy Subway Sandwiches and saw both the neighboring Osprey and Eagle soaring overhead. He gave me Dave who is patiently aware I am writing about him disturbing my morning. While he was worried about a chilled house and the possibility of frozen pipes, I was mentally picturing a fire in the fireplace and warmth like a blooming rose! While he was practical, he knew I was in some other place, another planet, another sphere. God put us together and He knows why He did that. I will thank God for this day, I will thank God for Ospreys and Eagles, and I will thank God for Dave. I will try to get over morning arriving with a bang rather than a whisper!
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