Early to Rise

I am an 8 hour girl, usually. I require 8 hours of sleep, period. It is possible to awaken me as much as an hour or so early, but there isn't much point. My eyes might be open, my legs might walk around, but the brain won't fully engage till 8 hours after I went to sleep. Don't bother with coffee, don't ask any hard questions, just hold on... and think about why you woke me so blessed early. Except sometimes when, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, I awaken early. My eyes pop open and there I am, in the dark of night, wide awake with fingers itchy to get ahold of something in my workroom. This is what happened yesterday.
I have been cleaning up a baby picture of Adrian's dad, my ex-husband, Larry. It is an especially sweet baby picture. The baby in it bares no trace of having grown up to be, well, how to put this ... what one expects an ex-husband to be -- grouchy, demanding, ogreish... someone less than charming. But the baby Larry is entirely charming. He has sparkling eyes and an engaging grin. He has a shared-secret kind of face, it's a face that seems to be saying, "I know where the cookie jar is -- c'mon, I'll show you."
Then, next thing you know, you are married to this person who thinks his job in life is to keep you under his thumb, make blustering, crashing noises and to say, "No, no, no," all the time like a big no-fun, crabby, bratty baby. So of course I love the picture of charming baby Larry. It captured that split second in time when Larry was as adorable as he would ever be. Not to mention that a picture is absolutely silent. There is a lot to be said for silence.

There is also a lot to be said for that split second in time when all is right with the world and it is ripe with sweet possibilities. I look at that picture and believe Larry had, at least once upon a time, the capacity to be happy, to be charming, to be everything one might hope him to be, before poof, it was gone. I look at that picture and am charmed all over again. That was the boy who became the man who asked me to dance, who tried to teach me to ski and to drive a stick, none of which turned out well. But he tried and I tried and you have to wonder who got in the way, who throttled the happy baby out of him... Was it an aggressive parent thumping him on the head day after day what did it? Was it me? Or did he look around and somehow jump to the wrong conclusion, the conclusion that being surly and punitive and disengaged was the way to go. Did he fight to hang on... or did he just give it away?
And isn't it true of all of us too... whatever happens to us, whether we are buffeted this way or that, it is our job to protect ourselves, it is for us to define who we are. How we see ourselves, how we interact with the world, is in part the measure of our success. Who we are is everything. Whether we did or didn't let the bastards get us down.
And so, yesterday morning, when my eyes popped open early and I was filled with itchy energy and an image of a happy baby with which to do something, I came up with this sweet collage boy. He is emerging into the world, becoming who he would become. He isn't quite finished yet. He needs keys to the kingdom... however tarnished.