Waking Moments

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I’m sure we all have moments of confusion at times on our awakening. It’s especially easy to wonder what time it is and how long you've slept. Especially if you've lain down at an odd time of day due to a headache or such. Sometimes I even still think I’m a kid in those moments of grogginess, until my brain wakes up. I remember awakening a year or two ago dreading to have to go to grade school that day. Last week I awoke to the crows cawing from the huge poplar trees in the front yard. Except that I have oaks in MY yard; the poplar trees were on the west edge of the front yard at my boyhood home, where I haven’t lived since 1976. (There really were crows, but they were in my oak trees.)

My wife is no better. She grew up on a ridge top road where another road took off and went down a hollow to a road along Waddington Creek in the main valley in the area. It was a gravel road supposedly, but in truth, it was normally dust, mud, ice or snow. When dusty, it was rough, but when it was one of the other three, it was often nearly impassable. Many a night growing up, my wife heard engines revving and tires spinning as people who were hung up in the hollow tried to free their vehicle and move onward. Though our driveway is flat, our neighbor is not so blessed. While shorter than ours, his has a pretty good slope to it. Often, ice, snow or mud strives to keep his vehicle from escaping his gravel driveway. Then he revs and spins with the best of them. At such times, from her drowsy TV nap my wife says, “Sounds like someone’s hung up in the holler!” We laugh when she becomes fully awake and returns to the present.

I wonder if that’s a sign of old age or if other folks experience the same dreamy confusion that we do. © 2013

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