Early as a Bird
My dad used to wake up at 4 am every morning when we lived in Argentina. He would hang out in the kitchen, the one place in the house with access to food, mate (a traditional herb drink used in Argentina instead of coffee), silence, and a table. Once awake, he would write in his journal, read books about Latin American politics, and finish this routine by reading some Bible pages. Sometimes he would work on his book, chapter by chapter, which he typed with a typewriter (this was the early nineties). I remember most of this because by the time I was a teenager, I would come back home at 6 am from going out with friends in Buenos Aires, and there was dad, freshly awake since 4 am, sitting in the kitchen, typing away.
I always wondered why he started this habit. Was he naturally a morning person? Did he just enjoy only sleeping 6 hours to wake up at 4 am? Had he always just been an early bird?
Then I became a parent, and I understood.
My 4-month-old baby gets put to bed at 8 pm, and she usually sleeps until 4 am. By the time my husband and I have dinner, finish dishes, and get in bed, generally trying to watch twenty minutes of a show before we pass out, it's 10 pm. That usually leaves me with 6 hours of sleep until the next time I need to wake up to feed her. Once I'm done with that task, I have two options. I can try and go back to sleep, which usually takes me an hour, to wake up again at 7 am, the same time she wakes up. Or, I can wake up at 4 am.
What's the perk of waking up so early into the quiet dawn as I happily stare at my eye circles getting bigger and bigger?
Exactly that. That I have a total of three hours of stillness and silence to do whatever I want while everyone else is sleeping. That might mean catching up on chores, showering without feeling rushed, or hanging out on Twitter. But mostly, it means working on my freelance projects, working on my writing, and reading. The point is that I have three total hours of uninterrupted silence and time, all for myself.
So, unless my baby is going through a sleep regression like the one she had last month and waking up every two or three hours, I will choose the 4 am wake-up time. Not because it makes me more "productive," not because it somehow makes my day better, not because it might improve my quality of life, but because for those few hours, I can just sit there and be.
People say being a mom changes you, and I see how I've changed. I had a pretty uneventful pregnancy, the same with my labor. My body might be the same size as before I was pregnant, but it feels different. My back hurts often, and my pelvic floor still feels weak. I don't sleep more than 6 hours and spend a lot of my day talking to an infant. Although the newborn stage can be isolating and monotonous, I find rolling on the floor and singing to my baby all day fun. The infant stage is also when babies genuinely believe they are an extension of their mother and depend on their caregivers for every need. I love this stage, yet I am also growing to like the silence and detachment of these early mornings. I cannot see life without my daughter anymore, and yet I also look forward to the time I will be able to work on some writing and just sit at the kitchen table, just like dad did.
I wonder if that's why he chose the 4 am mornings too.
Dad left us too early. He died of Cancer two years ago and never met my daughter. I imagine him still in that old apartment in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sipping on his mate and typing away on his typewriter early in the morning, later getting ready to go to teach high school after helping my sisters and me get ready for school. I never got to ask him how I was as a baby. When did I sleep through the night? How often did he have to hold me, change diapers, feed me? Did I get fussy a lot? How long did it take me to learn how to roll? What faces did he make to make me laugh? Did I enjoy playing with crinkly toys? Did he sing to me?
I have a feeling that he started waking up early then, when my sister and I were babies who thought he and mom were mere extensions of us. His love of being a dad balanced out by his love for some alone time in that small kitchen. This morning, as I made my pot of coffee at 4 am, I remembered and missed him a lot.