Early morning blues

It’s 5 a.m. and I wake my daughter so she can have enough time for breakfast and to get herself ready before the shuttle service arrives to take her to school.

Image from SarahSeeAndersen.tumblr.com

She groans and snuggles deeper into the covers. I tug at the blanket. “C’mon darling. Time to get up.”

It’s getting harder and harder to rouse my daughter these days. She is now at the stage where she wishes she didn’t have to go to school.

I remember it well. Like her, I also balked at waking up early, taking a cold bath (water heaters were not in vogue then) and eating breakfast before walking to school. I remember lining up four Nescafe glasses and filling each with a spoonful of Milo for the four of us sisters (our youngest had not yet been born) and hating the tediousness of it. Even more, I hated lugging my heavy bag all the way to school. I even recall counting the years of school that I still had to go through and feeling a sense of helplessness combined with hopelessness at the seeming eternity of it. I remember wishing they were over.

Now, I count those years as among the best in my life.

Those were years when lasting friendships were born and good memories were made, of academic struggles and extra-curricular fun. Then there was the intoxicating fill of crushes and puppy loves as well as heartbreak, imagined and otherwise. There was a whole lot of discovering – skills, talents, strengths and weaknesses. There was a whole lot of growing, and it was fun, fun, fun.

I don’t remember exactly when I stopped counting the years I still had to go through what then seemed like a torturous morning ritual, but I do remember that I did. While waking up early remained an inconvenience, it became a necessary hiccup to a day which held so much in store. True, there were the academic requirements which then seemed so difficult, time-consuming and insurmountable but which now pale in comparison to the demands of life after school.

It’s amazing how the years can change one’s perspective or how one's perspective can change over the years.

But having been my daughter once, I know that nothing I can say right now will make her like getting up for early morning showers – even heated ones. Like many schoolchildren, she will get up because she has to until it reaches a point when it’s not even a concern but just a necessary start to the promise that a day holds.

And then I will miss enveloping this not-so-little girl into a good morning hug to get her going, not so gently, into that bathroom.