OVER MY LIMIT

Since I’ve been back from Michigan I have been waking up on Michigan time, an hour earlier than my alarm. If I wake up in the middle of the night I can usually tell it’s the middle of the night but this recent little episode is hard to figure. If I can’t get back to sleep in half an hour or so, I get up. That’s when I discover the hour. So 5:45 a.m. means I’ve been awake since 5:15, an hour ahead of the alarm. I’m still on Michigan time. 

Last week I drove down to Nashville for a compound birthday party. I was in the army with Harry sixty years ago. At 20 I was a week older than he was and that disparity is a constant. His wife thought we should celebrate #80 together so I drove on Friday, helped prepare on Saturday, partied with all their friends on Sunday and retraced my drive on Monday. All three nights there, I woke up shortly after 5:00 a.m. I tried staying up late but that just lulled me into a sooner than later nap. 

This growing old thing has its peculiarities. I wouldn’t call them drawbacks, the alternatives are either malcontent or dying young. Harry told me, “I think I’ll go for another twenty years.” I replied, “I’ll go for tomorrow.” He rolled that around for a short minute and conceded the wisdom of living in the present but he was just being polite. We are friends after all due to a shared history with all of the misadventures that youth spawns. Two days every ten years is all we need. Another day and my welcome would have worn thin. My nuance is a good enough is good enough, left leaning adaptability. Harry’s base line is never good enough, carved in stone with a built in, clock wise rotation. But when you’ve been friends that long you don’t want to let it go sour. So we focus on what we still have in common and go our own ways before the wind changes. 

I love being on the road and every landscape has its own beauty but that stretch of interstate between Paducah and St. Louis, it puts me to sleep. I had to stop twice, park in the shade and close my eyes. Waking up, if the shade has passed us by, I know I napped over my limit.