NL #2: I take my waking slow

NL #2 : Ann wakes in the morning like a superheroine. Her alarm makes a teenie noise as the radio is about to turn on. She hears it; her eyes pop open; she rips the tape off of her mouth and shuts off the radio before it's had a chanced to say anything; and she leaps to her feet, ready to rid the world of all bad things and to grow goodness in the world. (I have to imagine much of this as I never have opened my eyes before her feet hit the floor.) Even in her yoga, she takes on the world with warrior pose after warrior pose.


I, in contrast, take my waking slow. My first alarm turns on the radio and I give it a nasty stare. I stretch. I yawn. I moan. I try to cheer myself out of bed, but I've never been much of a cheerleader: "Rise and Shine!," I try, using the encouraging voice of the Camp Seafarer morning greeting. "Up, up, up, up," I say to myself, like a child watching a helium balloon ascend into the clouds. I might follow lack of success here with a more sporty, "Up and at 'em!" This doesn't work either, so I try philosophy: "No time like the present." This is the point where, if I have risen to my elbows, I lie my head back down on the pillow and moan from the strain of it all.

Next, I try music: First, a slightly revised version of Neil Sedaka's "Waking Up is Hard to Do," but I find the down dooby doo down down takes me further into the pillow. Then I try a camp song, which ends with the sun coming up and the dew falling away, "'Good morning, Good morning,' the little birds say." This usually does it. Magically I rise and head to the yoga mat, not to do warrior pose but a gentle stretch: cat-cow. I don't meow or moo.

A daily miracle.

Test  tomorrow. Don't oversleep. Mary