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I am generally an uni-directional person. When I get pointed in a particular direction, I tend to stay in that direction until acted on by an outside force. Such is the case with my mornings. Once I start to move, I tend to keep moving until the day is done. It's all about the momentum. That's why weekends can be so tremolous for me. I would love to imagine a morning like I had in my youth, where I could stay in bed until noon, but the realities of home and hearth work against that wish.
I have surrendered to the dog who needs to be up and out before the dew settles on the grass. I know that my son will somehow muster the strength to pull himself out of his own bed on these two days each week, even though school days require special documentation from a circuit judge and a portable defibrillator to move him. My wife's ability to sleep through earthquakes is well-documented, and so that leaves me. Mister Light Sleeper. As long as I'm up, I might as well do whatever it was that I was going to do anyway.
That's why Sunday morning was such a revelation for me. I heard the dog stir at quarter til seven. Happily, that storm passed, and I hovered in the twilight sleep until I first heard the rooster. Our neighborhood's free range rooster. He was crowing just outside our bedroom window. I rolled over and kept my eyes closed. As the rooster continued his salute to the new day, I heard my wife moan, "Oh no." We waited for the bird to move on. He didn't.
My wife was up first. Opening the window, she tried to shoo nature's alarm clock away. He did move, but only a little further into our back yard, where he continued his serenade. This got my son out of bed. "What's going on?" he asked blearily. And now the dog was up too. I curled up on my side of the bed, trying to separate myself from the fracas going on outside my wall of sleep.
But it wasn't really sleep. In my mind I was able to track the movements of my family through the house, and out into the yard, where they attempted to chase the rooster away with curses and threatening gestures.
Finally, after realizing the essential futility of their efforts, they surrendered and came back inside. My wife came back to bed, and I hoped for a last-ditch effort at some shut-eye. That's when I heard her typing. She was Googling ways to shut up roosters. I implored her to put the laptop down and pretend to sleep. To her credit and my everlasting gratitude, she powered down herself and her computer. She pulled the covers up to her chin, and even though we could still hear that infernal bird strutting about our yard, shouting his approval of the new day, we stayed the course.
Until eight forty-five when the phone rang. Back to our lives, already in progress.