The passage from night to day is a very long one. At least it seems so to me. I don’t pass well from the one to the other. Night, very often, begins fairly well. I tend to go to sleep in a reasonable time but do not stay in that condition very long. Nighttime provides endless opportunities for interruption of sleep. Topmost among these is caused by nagging bodily pressures, which send urgent messages to the body parts involved of the need for the use of a certain porcelain contrivance that improves the utility of our bathroom. The bathroom itself is not very far from the bedroom and I happen to have the route fairly well memorized. Even so, the journey to its benign accommodations does not come easily. Although my awakening has been thrust rudely upon me, I remain in a heavy stupor and am only remotely aware of what I am doing. I grope unsteadily grabbing for any rigid vertical surface that may offer support and stumble without any semblance of grace and steadfastness toward the object of my foggy goal. I am hazily and vaguely comforted by the fact that I can do this in total darkness, unseen by family, friends or neighbors.

The urgent need for indoor plumbing is only one of the sources of my interrupted slumber. I tend to toss and turn with distressing regularity and frequency. I do not do so voluntarily. Usually, the aches, agonies, and torments that come from my lying, for an extended period of time, on certain unreceptive parts of my body cause my distress. My normal cunning, which is not working too well at that time of night, suggests that I twist and turn in order to send the discomforts to other non-aching body parts. This gives me a few moments of comfort during which I manage to doze off. Unhappily, the relief is short lived and the process must be repeated. I am not enthusiastic about the process. But the worst is yet to come.

What a miserable pity that every day must begin in the morning. If only nature, to which we are deeply indebted for much of the good fortune we enjoy throughout our lives, would add, to the worthwhile favors it bestows on us, that of beginning the day sometime in the early afternoon. You, alert reader that you are, have probably already inferred that I am not very fond of mornings. It seems that my body takes a long time to awaken. My brain takes a good bit longer. Now, my brain is not exactly a powerhouse even in its most productive moments but my body does not function well when the brain is totally absent. The period of time when my non-functioning brain is attempting to catch up with my barely functioning body gives rise to a most lamentable circumstance. The groping, weaving, teetering and fumbling that I performed in the post-midnight and pre-dawn hours was nothing but a warm-up exercise for my wake-up performance.

I am in desperate need of a massive infusion of hot tea. Unfortunately, until I can cover my body in a simple layer of clothing, this life-preserving elixir is denied me. This would be a simple operation except that at this time in the morning I can’t see, I can’t hear, I have no sense of balance, I teeter uncertainly and I can’t think. Other than those minor drawbacks, I function well. I have a drawer where I keep my socks, of which there are only three different colors. Years ago, in my more rational hours, I figured out that if I grabbed four socks from the drawer I would be guaranteed to have at least one matching pair. That was the easy part. Picking two matching colors from the four is the difficult part. Fortunately, if I make a poor selection of matches, my wife will correct my error when I appear at the breakfast table. The same is true of any other error containing garment selections I choose.

Even after a substantial ingestion of coffee and a grudging bite of some form of food substance, the long passage has not ended. My entire morning is spent in an unfocused state, with objects appearing in my vision as foggy, shapeless smears. Mornings, for me, can be moody, brooding, intense, unproductive, unsociable and unpleasant. Mostly, they seem interminable. My family is extremely tolerant of me and my morning miseries. In fact, I think they find my distress mildly amusing. Their good humor is infectious. I eventually begin, at least by noon, to respond in kind and progress from outright wrathful to sulky to feeling the warmth of and comfort of the human condition.