I woke the younger at 7.15am. Her first words: “It’s too late.”
For what, I wondered. She had decided the previous night that I was to wake her at 6.30. This would allow her time. “It’s too early,” I said, “You’ve had a long weekend and you’ve a full day of school ahead of you. 6.30 is too early.”
“Just wake me, right. I like to have time.” For what? Her sister chimed in, “Yeah, wake me too. I want to get up at 6.30. We can play with the dogs.”
“You can play with them when you come home from school. I’ll wake you at the usual time, you need your sleep.”
“No, we need our time.”
Sleep, they see as the enemy. Their mother and I see bed as a sanctuary, and the grasping tendrils of sleep as a welcoming pit, a place to make haste to and hope against hope that the slump into unconscious rest will be instant.
That we will not face anxious hours lying in the pit as a showreel of anxiety featuring overdue bills, bad workplace performance memories and a litany of personal embarrassing moments spins on an ever-decreasing loop.
Because while bed is a sanctuary, without the grip of sleep it can be the opposite. But this is something to which we have become accustomed, due to the weary tread of workaday responsibilities and ingrained, mundane, mid-life concerns.
Mainly bed is where you fall at the end of the day for far too short a time before the roundabout starts up again, its carnival tune beating a tattoo on your forehead to get up, get up, get up and get things moving once more.
You slap the bleeping phone, maybe snooze once for a seven-minute interlude, maybe twice on a particularly forgiving day, but soon you are up and doing and dreaming of returning to that warm pit.
Stroking and cooing
And the worst part of this? Having dragged my own weary ass from the luxury of my new, latex mattress, my first task every day is to coax my children from theirs.
They have grown up with the firm belief that it is the joy of my life to spend 10-15 minutes each morning nudging and stroking and cooing them into consciousness.
They are young, yet to realise the universality of the daily shock of waking, and presume that only they suffer it.
But at least they have a personal, gentle waker, someone to ease their transition from night to day, never mind that he can barely suffer the regular horror of it himself.
Tightrope
Neither of them have ever bounced from the bed, not unless there has been a pool outside and a promise of long days of sunshine and play. And even then sometimes the reminder of reality after a long night of sweet dreaming is too much to bear and the fresh dawn is greeted with a growl. Early morning has always been a tightrope.
I have tried the brutal sergeant major approach, the no input and take responsibility for yourself approach, the false bonhomie approach, the lie and bribe approach and have found that for prolonged and protracted results, coaxing works best. A gentle yet consistent pleading to get moving.
It leaves little room for the primal roar response because, while the expression of anger in the family is perfectly fine and normal, I’d rather we made it to the breakfast table before any blood is spilt.
Yet now we have these requests for early wake-up calls. Later nights and earlier mornings in the hunt for extra time. I thought time did not become an issue until a 40th birthday breezed by and suddenly you realised that more than half your allotted time had passed. No, time is a youngster’s issue too.
School, I am informed, is a time stealer and a massive waste of the aforementioned. But due to school being a necessary evil, time must be elicited elsewhere and so it appears that sleep, which shockingly seeks to amass 10 hours of every 24, must be pillaged to supply those crucial extra minutes.
I am aghast at this latest development. Well, mostly I am semi-conscious and clad only in boxers and threadbare towelling robe and wondering why anyone would insist they are woken at an hour before it is absolutely necessary. But insist they do, for the pure, simple, unadulterated reason of having time.
We are still late for everything, we are still screaming accusations and hunting for shoes minutes after the school bell has rung. Even with more time there is not enough time. Ever. For anything.
abrophy@irishtimes.com