Midlife Meditation

I have vague memories of sleeping until noon. They're mostly memories of high school--or, rather, of summer vacations during my high school years. In a pattern I've recently learned is a natural part of adolescent development, I stayed up well past midnight, sometimes until two or three in the morning, reading science fiction novels. My parents weren't too happy about me being up that late, so I took to hiding the lamp under my bed sheets. Risky, thoughtless behavior is also a natural part of adolescence: there were a number of times when, after hours of reading, I dozed off, only to be awakened by the smell of a sheet being scorched by the hot incandescent bulb it had collapsed into as I slumped into my pillow. Staying awake that late, and then needing nine or more hours of sleep, I would often stumble downstairs, still groggy, at lunchtime. Those days are gone. I'm not sure when my minimal sleep quota shrank from nine to eight to, now, somewhere between five a...

This morning, I woke up at 4:30. That's actually my normal wake-up time. I set my alarm for 5:00, but it's rare for it to ever go off. I've usually showered, shaved, dressed, and shut it down before it has a chance to play the first few bars of Oregon's "Aurora." My internal clock is a useful thing to have on school days, when it gets me out the door and on the road across town to East Portland before the 6:30 rush. On weekends, though, it can be frustrating. Yesterday I lay in bed, snuggling with Amy, for 45 minutes before deciding, around 5:15, to just give in and get up. Today, though, I was able to get back to sleep, and this time it was Amy's 7:00 alarm that woke me up--a sound so rare to my ears it shocked me, as did the sunlight streaming through the window. I put the extra hours of sleep down to a light evening--we didn't get home from Comedy Sportz until 11:15, and probably weren't asleep until midnight. For the most part, though, ...