Monday Morning

Angela Lansbury cautions that one should stretch for ten minutes before rising.  I read her book years ago.  I imagine it still occupies a bottom shelf somewhere in my house.  I don’t remember much else from that book but I still try to follow that one suggestion.

Stretching in the dark allows for mindless contemplation.  The voices on the radio have not yet intruded into my morning.  I have not yet checked the weather or fed the dog.  I don’t know when my first obligation of the day starts.  I lift my arms and raise my hands towards the ceiling, feeling protest in the taught muscles.  Only the constant ringing in my ears breaks the silence.

In a few hours, I will be stumbling through the demands of my law practice.  My personal chorus of self-doubt will clamor to be noticed. Phones will  ring; my secretary will hover in the doorway; and insistent queries will flood my in-box.

But in the stillness of the unlit house, at six a.m., none of that matters.  Stretch, release; stretch, release. Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.

It’s the eighteenth day of the twenty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

 

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