The Alarm Clock Ballet

In this second career of ministry in a rural setting, most days I no longer have to live by the alarm sounding time to get up . . . most days I just get up when I wake up – a lovely gift of living to the rhythms of my body and the world around me – most days.

But some days an alarm is required – like today.

And can I just say how demonic I think the inventor of the snooze button is?  Who came up with that nefarious idea that we can somehow buy ourselves just a little more sleep by the hit of a button?  Really, who?  You can tell us.  We won’t hurt you – well, maybe only a little.

But I digress.

I put my alarm just out of reach so that I actually have to get out of bed to turn it off.  Otherwise me and snoozie just sleep on into the day 5 minutes or so at a time.

Even that doesn’t work for this deep sleeper, though, as I’m fully capable of jumping out of bed, hitting snooze and going right back into the warmth of the covers for those precious 5 more minutes.

Usually the maneuver looks like a fish jumping from the water and plunging back in again with that slight hesitation at the top of the arc.

But some days, waking happy if sleepy, I do the alarm clock ballet:

Jump from bed

Land on one tip toe

Straighten knee

Hit snooze with one delicate pointed finger

Pirouette

Fall gracefully

Repeat

It’s my own personal alarm clock ballet, this move, proving to myself that I can still dance, even if it’s in the morning when no one else can see, even if the grace of the move lies only in my imagining, and yes, it is good and smiling, I plunge back into my dreams.