It’s not the morning.
It’s what comes after and before and around.
It’s not the beginning….it’s the finish.
What the heck am I saying?
You can’t have a finish without a beginning….you have to have a starting point.
OK….maybe it is the morning.
Maybe the morning is what it’s all about.
That’s the best time, anyway…..the quiet morning with the rooster just starting to crow and the mad dash to get ready for work because you overslept and the water is on in the teakettle downstairs and you’re going to have to run the Lego gauntlet in a moment when it whistles for you and hope that you don’t wake everybody up when you cry out in pain….even though everyone else is going to have to wake up in fifteen minutes, anyway….you hoard that sliver of quiet before everyone else gets up….and you go to run the mail around and around again.
It’s the morning.
It’s the morning and everything around it….everything that creeps up on morning until morning turns to night and I go to try to sleep and see if the littlest baby is ready to sleep, too….or just wants to crawl around on the bed like it’s the most boring treehouse a Daddy ever built for his spouse and new baby daughter…like it’s a mattress raft awash in the sea of desperate weariness.
There’s not a good division between good and trying to be good days….it all runs together….waiting out the weird until something that I know I like comes back around.
What do you do when a baby won’t sleep….up and, not crying, just screwing around and checking out the nighttime world?
I don’t know if they really understand what, “Go to sleep, baby” means.
She doesn’t seem to understand.
Either that or she’s having too much fun at 2 in the morning to pay attention to us.
This baby makes me feel like I might not be in complete control of my life.
Who’s in charge here, anyway?
I’ve had a sip of coffee and I’m racing towards continuing my employment….got to get to the USPS facility, got to get to work….and maybe tonight we’ll sleep some.
Maybe that little baby will quit testing our endurance tonight.
She’s got to go to sleep sometime.
Everybody’s got to sleep sometime, right?
“To The Morning” Dan Fogelberg