I've never been a morning person. And I don't thing that I've become one, but I am starting to appreciate mornings alot more than I have in decades past. When I was a kid, I would wake up somewhere between the crack of noon and the early two o'clock hour to greet the brand new day. Left up to my own devices, I would be up all night and sleep all day.
It doesn't work out too well when you are a kid, but when you get older, it becomes easier to restructure your life around nights. I would get jobs where I could work the grave yard shifts--ERs, Ambulance services, a couple of bars--and I would fall into a natural rhythm.
Now I have a job that asks that I be at work at crazy times in the morning--5:00, 7:00, 8:00--and a son that gets up at 9:00 am, 7 days a week. In a month or two, I am going to have classes that have me in a desk first thing in the morning 2 days a week, and that means that my days of nights have come to an end.
But it is a happy end, because in the dark of the morning, in a routine of silence, pondering and stillness before a hectic day begins, I've found all of the things that I loved about nights. I've been able to find a place of solitude on my couch, where I can wait like sentinels for the dawn.
