Friday, March 24, 2006


I've been thinking about what it's like to wake up. Every morning I wake up the same way: babies crying so early that I refuse to light up the halogen in my watch to see what time it is. If I have the luxury of sleeping in, it is then interrupted by either 1) the voices of construction workers finishing the house next door in rapid, verbose Spanish, or 2) various family members telling their noisy children in hushed tones to be quiet because their auntie is still sleeping (little do they know that the hushed tones are just as loud to a light sleeper as the loudest scream-- both go right through my door and thin walls into my unfortunately sensitive ears). But there's times when we wake up to life. A certain familiar and comfortable sleep is suddenly or perhaps slowly (in the case of the yelling babies) interrupted and broken into so reality may creep in and my reluctant eyes might open to a very undreamy room (or situation). It's too late to go back, sleep is not a possibility (I speak for myself only. For those of you in the world that God blessed with the ability to keep sleeping after waking up, I'm jealous. I was not so blessed. I refer here to literal sleep). But one cannot always be sleeping. If they did, they would miss everything that isn't worth missing (sunrises, enjoying the babies when they first wake up instead of hating them, breakfast at the time breakfast makes sense-not half an hour before lunch, hearing birds in the very early morning). I'm not one to speak of this, I tend to be somewhat of a vegitable that time of day, but you get the idea. Sometimes waking up is one of the most pleasing things you can do, you just have to be willing to do it.