Good Mornings

This morning was perfect. I woke up before my alarm rang and took the dogs for a brisk walk up and down the hills near my house. Breakfast, prepared by Dar, included fresh-squeezed orange juice, eggs, waffles and fruit. I cuddled with Eden through the school’s  T’filla, the morning prayers, and now I am sitting at a nice cafe, writing to you. Perfect!

Sunrise from Bear Mountain at Coe

Mornings are my favorite time of day. I love the lightness of the air before the sun rays strike. I love the slight chill, left over from the night. I feel alive in the morning, vibrant, energetic, calm. The children, sadly, disagree. They like to go to sleep late and wake up even later. Especially on weekdays.

Lately I have taken to waking Eden with a song. “Little rhinoceros,” I sing to her sleep-puffed cheeks and determinedly shut eyes, “Wake up, little one. The sun is shining! The deer are running! Wake up little rhinoceros, wake up!” So far my songs have failed to convince her to awaken. From deep in her blankets, Eden commands me to hug her and tries to convince me that it is best for her to sleep for a few more hours. I remind her to wake up till finally, grumpy and cross, she rolls out of bed, all memories of our hugs and my song gone.

Pink-tinted sunrise at Coe as I start hiking down

She sits at the table, a veritable volcano in her pink pajamas, waiting for me to say one more word so she can explode. But what can I do? She needs to eat, get dressed, brush her teeth, put her folder back in her backpack, put on her shoes, and tell me what she wants for snack. Trembling with trepidation, I attempt to steer the little rhinoceros, my Karnafon whose nickname so fits sometimes, to do what I want so that we can get to school on time, hoping against all hope that like Scheherazade I will live to tell the tale for another day.

Uri likes to sleep late too, but he wakes up right away, gets ready down to his shoes before he sits down to the table to eat the meal which he ordered the night before. He often puts his alarm on for a much earlier time than I like. He may not be happy about rising with the sun, but getting to school in a timely manner is important to him.

I try to create a morning routine, thinking that order and clear expectations will bring about an easier morning. But Eden is a creative type. If she’s already up and not too grumpy, she wants to draw, dance, sing, tell stories. But there’s no time on a school morning for all that.

I haven’t found a solution yet, if one even exists. Sometimes there’s too much prodding and scolding in the mornings at our house. But other times, like today, there’s mornings full of love. Ups and downs. Like the hills. Like life.

What’s your morning routine like?

Living the Chicken-Eyed Life

My mother reads the New York Times, and for many years she used to cut out articles she loved and save them. One year, she gave me as gift a folder with thirty or so of her favorite essays from the NYT Journal. These days,she reads the newspaper on the kindle, and there are no more loose pieces of magnificent journalistic writing floating about the house. Instead, my mother points me out to links on the internet. “You have to read this,” she explains. And sometimes, like this morning, I do.

“Chickens on the Loose.” That’s the name of the Verlyn Klinkenborg editorial, recommended by my mother, which I read this morning. Even before delving in, I loved the title. I had chickens in my coop for more than a year, and then they stopped laying. I read somewhere that they can stop laying if they are afraid, which I considered could be the reason, given the owl, coyote and mountain lion prowling around my house. Having chickens was fun, not just because of the fresh eggs, but also because of their view of life. As Mr. Klikenborg says about his brood, chickens have boundless optimism, “the world seems perfectly adjusted to their expectations.”

How amazing is that! I can see Mr. Klinkenborg’s chickens running around his yard, pecking here and there, searching for grain and worms. Their world is a world of abundance, ask and it is given, search and the worm is there. They come to the door of the house, he writes, and look inside, “first with one eye, then the other,” and he explains, “they live in a monocular world, after all.” I knew just what he meant about the chickens tilting their heads as they looked at him, but what did he mean by monocular world?

Monocular Vision, according to Biology Online, “is a type of vision found mainly in animals with eyes placed on opposite sides of their head.” This has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, these animals’ eyes work separately and they can see more than one object at a time. On the minus side, their depth perception is limited and they can’t judge distance very well. Mostly predators have this type of vision, and chickens, whether we think of them as such or not, are a predator to the worm and to little flies. How cool is this? Chickens have more than one perspective of the world and less depth to what they see. Maybe that’s what gives them their innocent trust in the world.

I am so different, continually judging the depth of impact for every single occurrence in my life. I look every which way, miss more than half of what is going on around me, and then over-think it to death. Perhaps it is time for me to learn something from the chicken, the wonder of discovery, the possibility that a worm hides behind every leaf, and the philosophical (yet careful) acceptance of danger nearby.

Post-Stress "How Could I Be So Silly" Disorder

I don’t deal well with stress. Symptoms include headaches that won’t go away, tension in the shoulders and a feeling of depletion. Mostly I stress about whether my performance will measure up to my expectations when I feel I have no control over the result.

I’ve been thinking about stress management during my Wilderness First Responder re-certification course this weekend. I wanted to do well, to show myself (and everyone else) that I can assess a patient carefully and knowledgeably under pressure. And I knew the class was objectively stressful -- medical emergencies are frightening, and a calm rescuer can make a huge difference to a patient and anyone else on the scene.

I came to the WFR class this weekend with a strong sense of inferiority. Most people who take the class are guides, rangers, group leaders or search-and-rescue personnel, and I knew that most likely I’d be the only one who never used the training in the past two years. I also expected to be one of the oldest in the class. My first training course had 30 people out of which twenty-six were under 22 and three were over 60. You can guess where that left me. I felt acutely underprepared for this weekend, despite rereading the entire book and scoring well on the sample test. How can theoretical knowledge of wilderness medicine compete with actual field experience? The prospect of the class agitated me beyond belief.

A first glance on Friday revealed I was right. Four EMTs, lots of young people (though not quite 22 anymore), and nearly all but me needed the class for work. I was also almost the only one who had never dressed a wound. A perfect fit to my expectations. The three days of the class passed me with an impossible-to-relieve headache. On Sunday I returned home so exhausted I could barely stand up. I took a calming bath and spent the rest of the evening in bed with Jodi Meadows’ Incarnate, thankful that I now have peace and quiet for two more certified years.

From the safety of home, however, I have a confession to make. It’s possible that I didn’t quite have a reason to stress. On Sunday, after sweating for three hours waiting for the instructors to come and test me on my skills, I finally approached one and asked him why neither one of them observed me. “Oh,” he said. “We felt you were solid on the second day.”

Solid? Me?

I wish I had his confidence. I wish I could stress a little less about meeting with an emergency or at least be able to take the WFR class without hyperventilating my way into another headache. Familiarity might breed comfort if not belief in my abilities by my tenth or twentieth training. The best I can do is figure out what helps me relax at times of stress. A cup of tea might help. Or maybe a thump on the head?