Ready for the Week?

I’m waking up earlier these mornings so I can lie in the bed longer.

I know it sounds funny but is there anything nicer than just being where you are for once and looking around a little?

This is what we did as babies as we lay in our cribs and what sound is sweeter than the sound of babies waking and quietly cooing to themselves? Video cameras installed in their rooms let parents watch all this nowadays but isn’t it better to let them have their privacy, at least for these little rituals?

I wouldn’t want anyone but God looking at me mornings when I then shift over on to my back, hang my head over the edge of the bed and look out the bedroom window at that sky every morning, doctor’s orders. (It’s good for any neck that has begun to arc forward, instead of arcing back as Nature intended.  I also assume Yoga’s Reclining Bound Angle Pose to open my hips.

My bedmate thinks I’m odd but I can tell you it feels amazing, not just the opening of the joints but the just plain lying there. Inside my head, aloft in this mental heaven, thoughts drift past, and, in their drifting, match the lazy flights of the birds riding the air currents high over all our roofs.

My thoughts are long thoughts because my mind has risen above the daily landscape. There are no lists, no tasks, no plans for the future, but only this wonderful perspective. I can see my babyhood from here. Sometimes in my mind I can even walk through our old first house with its dark oak wainscoting and the smell of my grandfather’s cigars enshrouding his reading chair. He was still going off to his law office at 80, and at day’s end would ride the El home and have Hershey Bars in the pockets of his overcoat for my sister Nan and me to ‘go fishing’ for when he took it off to hang it in the closet.

I see all this and I think about the arc of my life, bending toward whatever fate. 

Last night I dreamed of sweet forgiveness from one I had long ago wronged and remembered that dream only because I was lying on my back in this way.

Oh for how many years did I leap from my bed already fizzing with the day’s anxiety! For now, somehow, all that has lifted. Problems remain with more problems to come but maybe I will be able to greet them more peacefully now, with a quieter mind.

Thus i am grateful for these gifts that today are mine:  the absence of pain, a safe home, and food in my belly. Gratitude for work to do and people to love. 

I’m midway through the day’s work now with much more work ahead. The difference is I feel equal to the task – and I hope you do too. 🙂

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