Night-Morning

My sister Amy’s front garden/greenhouse, Kuna, Idaho.

Although I wouldn’t really consider myself a “morning person”, I can and do certainly appreciate them, mornings. I mean, I’ve always been a nightowl – even as a little guy. There’s something about a daybreak, though, that’s amazing to me. The hour or so just before it. “Night-morning”, as my Grandma Gwen used to call it when explaining it to me as a preschooler. In those days, we lived in a small Nevada town a couple hundred miles away from the nearest large city – or relatively large one for the state – and, if we needed to get to one of ‘em for some reason like a doctor’s appointment or some such and make it there on time, we’d have to rise early-early and we’d be on the road when it was still dark, but that blue hue along the eastern horizon would be in its beginnings and morning stars would be in the sky and it was beautiful to me. But, at my age, then, it was confusing to me how my grandparents could call it “morning”, then, when it still seemed mostly night.

“Well,” my grandmother would explain… “It’s ‘night-morning’.”

Even as an adult, I still call it, that. If only for myself, to myself.

In spite of my “early-to-bed” or “later than that” status, officially (as I deem it), I’m rarely able to stay awake much past 9:30 p.m. Before lying down, I’ll go through my nightly routine: evening medications, Metamucil, water-check of the CPAP machine, turn out the lights. Then I’ll lie down – always accompanied by the dizziness that occurs when switching-up my body’s orientation. It’s quick to pass. I’m a lifelong insomniac; when I was younger, I simply stayed up ‘til midnight or after, then turned in. It’d often take me awhile to drift off. Thusly, when daylight came, I wasn’t extremely eager to get the fuck out of bed. What I didn’t know was that I was also not breathing well or ceasing to breathe altogether while asleep. I went for years before I was diagnosed with both obstructive and central apnea. Sleep studies, decades ago, found I was sinking down to dangerously low levels of blood oxygen in those days. So I got a CPAP. Hated it at first. Took years for me to get used to using one and to swear by ‘em. Now, the ol’ oxygen level is doing great. The central apnea will still give me grief, on occasion. That’s when your brain essentially forgets to tell your diaphragm to work your lungs. Won’t even have to be asleep when it’ll occur to me that I’m not breathing – at which point I’ll gulp at the air around me like a fish out of water. Then, a few years later, it was discovered – and quite by accident – that I had a football-sized thymoma growing in my chest that was attached to my right lung, heart, and diaphragm, and it took over the space where that right lung belonged, collapsing it. Luckily, the biopsies done found it to be benign and it was removed without incident and the lung was reinflated and is doing fine, in spite of some scarring. They had to leave behind some connective tissue on each of the organs for not wanting to damage those organs surgically, but – every year – I go in for scans to see if that tissue left behind is growing into something troublesome. The excision was performed in the spring of 2012; as it stands, if no growth is discovered next year, I’ll be considered “graduated” from worry over this and be done with it! Yeah; it’s a good feeling. What’s not a good feeling is that, to get at the tumor, they had to bust through the right side of my ribcage. To this day, getting into a comfortable position to sleep has been a bitch. Or staying in such a position. The ribs’ll always pinch me awake. Not horribly painfully… Just enough to get my attention, to wake me from a sound sleep. And then, following last year’s scan, it was discovered in thanks to the scan that I have a rare type of arthritic condition that attacks the spinal cord and extremities, ossifying one’s ligaments and tendons, there. Legs, knees, back, neck – they’re all giving me grief. I might get to bed early-enough, but come around 2:30 a.m. or so, I’ve had enough and I’m up. I’ve learned (or am claiming to have learned) to “thrive” on four or five hours of sleep, nightly. Usually with the help of an afternoon nap. Some may call out the “suck” of it, but it’s in those first “wee” hours that I can enjoy a little “me” time, some creative output, maybe pursue a little gaming, as is my wont. Those hours pass quickly. Soon, dawn is seeping over the mountaintops to the east and the birds start to chirp and it’s time for me to prep the coffee beans for the machine to grind and brew. Before long, the sun is up and so is the rest of the house and the day begins.

As is usually true of me, midway through a post, I had to pause for whatever. This time, it was lunch. I’ve been noodling-about with the intent to write about my morning and it’s already past noon. I dunno. Noon is often about the time at which- Ha. I was about to say “It’s about the time I finally start rolling,” but it’s really about when I start ideating a siesta. Especially if I’ve just eaten. I can’t eat anything, anymore – in any quantity – without feeling tired, after. I’m old.

After the morning coffee’s made and I’ve had a little something for breakfast, I’ll take my morning pills and another shot of Metamucil and – anymore – push myself like crazy toward something that once appealed to me. It’s gotten difficult in the last few months, that. I’ve been doing better, though. What’s good toward jumpstarting my day is a mosey through the yard in the early sunlight, maybe sitting awhile at the picnic table with my coffee. I might take our tiny Yorkie, Benji, out with me and read through some news or just let my mind wander while watching passing traffic on the small country road – Kuna Road – that borders the south end of the property, just west of the intersection with Happy Valley Road. Gaze at my sister Amy’s flowers, watch the hummingbirds stop at the feeders… While gathering my thoughts. Maybe, when I go inside, I’ll pull myself together well-enough to get something done. Or, at least, do something fun. Rather than hide under a dark cloud. That cloud’s been running my life for too long, now. It’s boring. Boring not only for me but for anyone I touch. Nah. I gotta ditch it.

Just getting to the next morning ain’t enough, anymore. Something’s gotta be done with that morning. Something amazing. Or, even, just nice.

That’s what’s happening with me. That’s the plan.