How you gonna get your day's work done
Sleepin' in the noonday sun?"
When I was young, there were lots of tomorrows. Now the yesterdays outnumber the tomorrows, and each today must be lived for all it's worth. My father tried to tell me that long ago, but I was young, and youth hears but doesn't always listen.
One late spring morning, in my third high school year, I lay abed in that state between almost awake and still snoozing. Eyes closed, dimly aware of the sound of birds chirping outside my open window, I gave myself a brief moment to orient time and place. Yes, I decided, it was Saturday. Good! No school! I snuggled deep under the white sheet that covered me and surrendered to the deliciousness of sinking back into sleep, wave after wave, farther and farther back in my brain, falling, falling.
Suddenly my bedroom door flew open. "Time to get up!" It was my dad. "No sleeping to noon today, lazy-bones!"
"Aw, Daddy..." How could he be so cheerful so early in the day?
"No 'aw daddy' about it! Up! Up! You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead and in your grave."
I thought that was a dumb sentiment, but of course I didn't say so. If he wanted me up before the noonday sun on a precious Saturday, I guess I was doomed to obey, but I didn't have to be happy about it and I wasn't.
Now, when at five a.m., temptation urges me to linger just another ten minutes or so under the soft comforter, I remember and wish he were here to fling wide my bedroom door, to tell me to get up and live the day before it's gone with the wind. Scarlet O'Hara said she would leave her worrying to tomorrow. If that's good enough for Scarlet, then leaving my sleeping to when I'm six feet under is good enough for me. Right now there's too much other stuff to do.