CHANGE YOUR CLOCKS -- AGAIN

Our neighbor is a shift worker. Since his driveway lies behind our bedroom, we are aware as he comes and goes at odd hours. In my semi-conscious drowsy state I hear him leave at 5:15 a.m., except that this morning I knew instinctively that he was leaving early. A glance at the clock confirmed that it was 4:15. Then I remembered – daylight savings begins today and I must turn the clock ahead an hour. So, yes -- 4:15 today was 5:15 yesterday. That seems wrong. The effect of moving the clock ahead an hour just seems wrong. The whole day will be wrong. It will be wrong for a week until finally the inner clock gives up and accepts. When I arose at 6:15 it was already 7:15 and it felt as though I’d slept away an important hour.

We have just come through the first winter when Mike didn’t rise early to go to the office. He’s fully retired now, and we both had to adjust to his new schedule – or lack thereof. I was surprised that we took to sleeping in a bit, sometimes rising as late as 8:00. The school bus arrives on our street at 7:25, and old mother that I am, I like to be up before that time – “to see the kids off,” so to speak.

 

Really -- I don’t like to sleep in. I don’t consider myself a morning person, but I discovered while still a teen-ager, that getting up in the morning gives the day a boost. If you have a big project for the day, you need those morning hours. I was proud of son Clint when he figured that out. “Get up in the morning,” I heard him advise his older brother. “I get up an hour early just to stare at the wall.” And I knew that boy was going to be all right. And he still says of accomplishment – “First, you have to get up in the morning.”

I get up –but I don’t like to get dressed. My mother said that as a child I was an early riser and if she got me dressed, I wanted to go outside. So, she learned to delay dressing me in order to control that. I got bravely over wanting to go outside, but I do love my pajamas, old robe, and slippers in the morning and again after supper. Mike, on the other hand, dresses as soon as he’s up so that he’s ready for whatever.

Arising early isn’t the only life plan, of course. Others work it out differently. My mother, for instance, was a slow starter. Sometimes she didn’t get going until after lunch and she often sewed several hours after supper – sometimes until midnight if she had a deadline. I see those kinds of deadlines as self-imposed and refuse to accept them. If I can’t finish in normal daylight hours, then I need to find “Plan B.” For one thing, by rising early, I’m also ready to rest (if not sleep) by 8:00 p.m. I’m not a napper.

 

I will say this, though: when I told my elder friends about my mother’s late hours, they both said – without missing a beat – that they found some of their best work to be what they finished late at night against a deadline. Hmmm. Some vintage values elude me, which I guess is what makes them vintage. KW

[I had planned to illustrate this blog with some vintage photos. However, the scanner program disappeared from the computer. Instead we show Mike and Nellie playing in the field.]