I distinctly remember Saturday mornings back at our old apartment in Roslindale. We were young, of course. I was maybe 23, had been married for a grand total of two years. I was such an adult! Living in the city! Being married! With enhanced jobishness! On those Saturday mornings, I had developed quite an arsenal of distraction tools designed to convince my husband it wasn’t time for him to get out of bed. Then when he finally stopped languishing, I would fall back asleep for an hour or two.
Car Talk started at 11. I sometimes got up only to be able to listen to it. I often didn’t get up in time for it. Sometimes I didn’t get up in time for Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me at noon. I shook my head at the crazy notion of people doing things at outrageous hours like NINE AM on a SATURDAY!
Well, here it is a Saturday these many years later. I have a few more pounds, significantly more wrinkles and live in the suburbs. At 6:30 this morning, a certain small person of my acquaintance demanded a clean diaper and breakfast. This didn’t shock and stun me with it’s imperative — this happens every morning. The exact time varies (every so rarely, usually when my husband is on morning duty, which is 80% of the time, the hour is as late as EIGHT O’CLOCK if you can believe it!!!) Far from luring my husband to remain in the soft domain of sheets with me, I ungallantly say things like, “Aren’t you going to get up with him?” or “Weren’t you planning on getting up at 7?” My greatest sleeping-in indolence lasts until about 9:30. That means my husband will have been on his own for two or two and a half hours.
I admit, I really miss sleeping in. I can still pull some crazy sleep times, given opportunity. There is a magic morning, not far in the future for Grey but impossibly distant for Thane, when all the parts of the morning that are required (the turning on of tv, the making of breakfast) will be self-sustaining. I fondly remember childhoods where a block of Saturday was spent with one or two original thoughts an hour. It’s really not such a bad thing, when you’re talking before 9. But not yet.
And now to go pick my mom up at 8 am at the airport — an hour which discommodes me not a whit. YAY MOM!!!!
My Truant Pen 
We’ve finally reached the spot where youngest is old enough that oldest can be trusted with her in the mornings. Since the both are early risers, we shoo them into the living room for cereal and tv and we get to sleep til the luxurious hour of 9:00 am! Woo! In another year or so, you’ll be there too.
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