Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Sunrises and Sunsets

I was born a night owl, I think. I don't ever remember popping up at the crack of dawn full of excitement and life. I could be wrong. I did have a TV in my room at an awfully early age, which, in my family is a means of staving off Saturday morning. But all I remember is dragging around and checking the news for school closings even in August.

I don't like mornings, not at all, not even a little. I prefer to sleep until 9ish, wake up slowly, have some cream and sugar with a little coffee in it and take a nice leisurely time getting up and getting ready for the day. Because I have a job and children, who must, MUST, rise at the crack of darkness, I will never, ever get to do that. Okay, maybe when I retire, but let's face it, by then I won't care what I look like and I may never get out of bed.

For, now I just live with the deep-seated hatred of all things morning. I'll just stumble around bleary eyed, trying to find clothes that I didn't wear yesterday, aren't stained and sort of match. I'll brush my hair and eat my breakfast in the car. I will try very, very hard to not fall asleep at the wheel. That's what I will do.

I don't really feel that I've missed much out of life, going around in this manner. Except for sunrises. I always believed that I must be missing something truly amazing in sunrises.

Then, my daughter started elementary school. Since she has to be dropped off at 7:15 and I have to leave the house at 6:45 to accomplish this task, I looked apprehensively at the watery sky in August, knowing that soon I'd be leaving before dark. Last week, the last week before Daylight Savings, we left in the pitch dark, it might as well have been midnight and we arrived in the still mostly dark. I would then leave, wondering how children are supposed to learn when it's dark outside and the sun would come up somewhere between the babysitter's house and work.

Can I just tell you how unimpressed I've been with sunrises? They are not all that pretty. I feel like I've been led to believe a lie. They are sort of like sunsets, with all the color and drama washed out. How is this pretty? Okay, there were a couple of days with some phenomenal pink clouds and at least one morning the sky turned purple for 20 seconds, but as a whole, I find them disappointing.

And now the time has rolled back and there is already light in the sky when my children and I spill out the front door and pour into the car. I am currently being spared the horrors of riding around in the pitch dark and explaining to a six year old who acts like a teenager that I don't care if it's dark, we are going to school.

Next month, I'll have to be subjected to the sunrises again.

1 comment:

ann said...

Sunrises seem to pass a lot faster than sunsets. Sunsets go on and on.

I like the early morning because of the quiet. When I was in school, my dad would sometimes wake me up around 4 to I'd finished my homework, which I never had. I still occasionally choose to get up that early to finish something (even to start something).

Not to say that I am fully awake and alert at that hour. One time when my dad woke me up at that time, I woke up scared that I was blind. I told him so. He asked me what I saw, I said, "I only see white!" He said, "Roll over, honey. You're looking at the wall." (I've probably told you that story before.)