When Did 7:30 Become Early
We’ve gotten into the habit of sleeping in to 9 or even 9:30 every morning. All my life I’ve been an early riser, even and maybe most especially on weekends and holidays. Even five years ago, sleeping into 9 would have felt off.
You might think that now that we are retired. (I hesitate to say that word, retired, because there was never anything official. We just quit doing stuff, like going to a job—VIc, driving trucks, and me, teaching, school administrating, etc. we just stopped.)
Anyhow, you might think that being retired means we stay up late. so getting up everyday at 9:30 makes some sense. A little yes but mostly no. We do regularly stay all the way up to 9:30 pm nowadays, whereas for the last decade or so, I went to bed at 8:30. (I know, I know this is a ridiculous time for an adult to go to bed each night, but me and early bedtime is another story for another time.)
So we usually go to bed at 9:30 and get up at 9:30. I will state the obvious, that is 12 hours. I read for a good 45 minutes in bed before falling asleep and I read for another hour or more in the morning before getting up. So, to be generous, let’s say i sleep sleep for 10 hours a night, and it doesn’t feel like I slept a minute too long. It just feels natural, like what my body demanding. Anything less and it complains at me all day.
But this morning I am up at 7:30. I was up the same time one day last week. And it feels early. It’s winter now and while the sun is up at 7:30 it’s a weak, apologetic light that just slides over the trees and buildings casting more of a grey glow than any real sunshine. Come summer, the 7:30 sun will baptize my south-facing windows with bright, explosive shards, forcing my hand to cover my eyes from the glare until I must close the shades by 10 o'clock—a trick I learned as a child growing up in the South without air conditioning.
I’m up at 7:30 this morning because I‘m meeting, via some version of zoom, with Jane. She’s a writer. Someone I have known for many many years but only in the last couple of years have we become friends on a personal level. We try to meet via Zoom-ish every week. We take time off for holidays, trips, etc, but we’re consistent enough that even if we go awhile, starting up again feels natural.
We talk about writing. Jane is a writer. There was a time, I thought I was a writer, but not anymore. Not a real writer. Not like Jane. She laments that she is not a commercially successful writer and sometimes, if she’s feeling especially low, thinks of giving it up. But she will not, because Jane is a real writer. Unlike me.
So, mostly now, Jane writes and I read what she writes and I type in little comments on the side of her stories or essays. She is a good writer. Every week we talk about what she has written and then we talk about how hard it is to get published and how hard it is to get a real agent and how hard it is to work (Jane works) and carve out sufficient time to write. And sometimes I talk about Vic, and his Lewey Body Dementia, and how that is affecting our lives and sometimes Jane talks about her divorce and how it is starting over again in your sixties.
We’re two ladies discussing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Neither of us is where we thought we would be in our sixties, but the question still remains and it is just as pertinent (certainly more) as it was in our teens and twenties and thirties: What will we do with this “one wild and precious life”? (Mary Oliver)
I don’t know but I’m positive that for Jane it will include writing and for me, who knows, maybe writing, maybe just being present for Vic in his hours of need. I feel a great need for nature, for trees, and creeks with salamanders and scuttling crawfish. I feel a pull to big open spaces and sunlight filtered through spring leaves. I feel all this things and 10,000 more.
Ever since I turned 60 I have told myself that I have 20 more years. Now that I am 67, I still tell myself that I have 20 more years. It is the arithmetic of hope and wonder.
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