|
Wake up
songs
Shake 'em up, shake 'em up,
shake 'em up, shake 'em…
5-6
- Sunday morning,
early light trickles through kitchen blinds in
yellow-white tangents that are alive with tiny asteroid
belts of dust, cat hair, and the sprits of the departed
evening.
-
- We all slept in a
bit this morning, but the kid needs to eat. I take him
into the living room and set him in his playpen before
heading into the kitchen to assemble the pieces of his
breakfast.
-
- He's groggy, but
still manages to produce a series of high pitched,
impatient cries while I try to focus my motorskills on
buttering toast, finding a bib, and pouring apple juice
into his cup.
-
- As much as I want
to be a help to Kim, take these tasks off her hands and
let her sleep in, I am unpracticed, and it probably takes
much longer for me to get everything coordinated the way
mom does.
-
- My son
expresses his disappointment.
-
I
rush over and bribe him with a graham
cracker. -
- He accepts my
cinnamon-dusted hush money, but something in his eyes
tells me that I should hurry up with his meal. The toast
pops up.
-
- Soon he's mashing
bread in the general direction of his mouth. I keep an
eye on him, check e-mail.
-
- Weekend mornings
should be slower paced. That's my gut feeling. Children
change this to an extent (children change everything to
an extent), but one day soon I hope he will be waking
from his own bed, sneaking out to the kitchen on his own
to eat too many bowls of marshmallow cereal and watch
cartoons.
-
- Having a nine to
five gig makes you want to sleep in. Especially nocturnal
types like me who follow up full workdays with mindless
hours in front of a TV.
-
- Kim and I spent
some time with some other couples we know - sort of a
'Cinco de Mayo without having to watch the kids' thing.
It was a good time, and Kim was radiant with excitement
over the chance to socialize. She came home smiling and
tired, and took the baby to bed.
-
- Not sleepy for a
variety of reasons, I hit the web. After checking email
and looking for some research material - I got into an
unexpected but fabulously rewarding AIM chat about poetic
structure with a friend of mine in Denver.
-
- I headed to bed
close to three a.m., sleepy yet inspired.
-
- The kid slept
silently until about nine a.m. before he started to toss,
turn, and kick us out of dreamland.
-
- A short while
later, he is sitting in his little walker-chair thing,
eating pineapple chunks and teasing the cats with pieces
of his toast. Contented, his chirpy little voice sings
out a weird variety of syllables that I wish I
understood.
-
- Taking advantage
of his preoccupation, I headed over to the bookcase where
I keep my CD's to hunt for the appropriate wake up music
for this morning.
-
- When I was living
alone, and didn't have to be as wary about who I might
wake up, I made a habit of playing wake up songs to start
my day off the right way. I used to have this huge boom
box that had an alarm clock feature on it, and I would
set the thing incredibly loud with various punka-rocka,
heavy metal, or whatever else I could find to get me
going in the mornings.
-
- I would put the
boom box on the sink; play songs while I showered - take
it into the kitchen and let it help the morning coffee
brew. Looking back, I woke up a lot to Killing Joke, The
Clash, Pantera, Anthrax, Bad Brains, Public Enemy, and
24-7 Spyz. In my world, these bands helped to male up the
major food groups of the mosh pit diet. And when you
really needed to get out the door and make your way to
class, or work -- you needed that sort of slash and burn
type of breakfast to drag you out of bed.
-
- Weekends started
later, but music was still an integral part of the 'get
up and come to life' process. Saturdays and Sundays
usually brought jazz with breakfast. Coltrane, Miles --
there was a particular tape by Bob James and Earl Klugh
that seemed to make any hangover seem less
severe.
-
- All these past
favorites bubbled through my mind as I thumbed through
the CD's looking for an appropriate choice. I've got a
borrowed copy of "Who is Jill Scott?" that I have been
listening to all week, sitting in the jewel case of my
copy of "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane. And while
either of those discs would be the perfect compliment for
this quiet Sunday morning with a cooing baby and the
warmth of sunshine washing over the room, there's a song
that's been running through my mind all morning that I
absolutely have to hear in order to get rolling
today.
-
- "KKK Bitch" by
Ice-T and Body Count.
-
- I don't know --
sometimes you get that one tune in your head, and you
just need to feed that monkey and put the thing in the CD
player on infinite repeat. This morning was one of those
times.
-
- The baby has
developed this "dance" of a sort where he waves his arms
in the air and shakes his head back and forth, sort of
like Stevie Wonder.
-
- And so, with the
steam from a fresh cup of coffee tickling my top lip and
my son and I jamming out full bore to Ice-T -- I wake up,
ready to face the day.
|