The Angry Morning

7:14. I turned the light on. That's it, that's the whole crime. She screamed like I'd taken something from her, face down in the pillow, one arm swinging out at the air.

have you ever felt this way too?

And I did the dumbest thing a person can do at 7:14 in the morning. I started arguing with someone who wasn't even awake yet. Come on. We're late. Everybody wakes up. It's morning. I said it three different ways, each one a little sharper, to a three-year-old with her eyes still shut. The more I explained, the louder she got.

So I turned the light back off. I laid down facing the same way she was, so I wasn't looming over her, and put my hand flat on her back. And I said the only true thing I had. You didn't want it to be morning yet. I'll stay till your body wakes up. Then I shut up. I just waited in the dark with her, listening to the clock I couldn't do anything about anyway.

Her breathing slowed down. Then her hand came up and grabbed a fistful of my shirt. We're getting up, I told her. But you pick. Two more minutes, or I carry you out like a sleepy koala. She didn't lift her head off the pillow. Koala, she said.