My Family First Thing in the Morning

I am definitely not one of those morning people. I cannot and will not spring out of bed with a smile on my face, shiny-eyed and tidy haired. I am no Jack-in-a-box. I may be walking (slowly) and my eyes may be open (barely) but do not be fooled, I am not awake!

My strange and rather demented mother wakes up at four o’clock every morning. She doesn’t own an alarm clock. It’s just creepy! She bounces out of bed ready to face the world and the washing machine and the breakfast and her work and feeding the cats and making my lunch...

She does more in two hours than what I do in an entire day, yet for her, that’s the easy part.

In between all of these mundane tasks, she puts on a brave face and marches into my bedroom.

“Sarah, out of bed, wake up!”

“Mmph...,” I say.    

“Vertical!” she says.

I sit up in bed with a bird’s nest of hair, puffy eyes and all. I look as if I have been hit by a train and I a suffering from severe concussion. Happy even to have received a response from me, mother-dearest walks out the door. I think, as I slump back down into the depths of pillows.

“The battle is not yet won, mother-dearest.”

Several minutes of blissful dreaming later, another war is waged.

“Aha, this time she hath broughteth reinforcements!”

I lie in my world of warmth, soft pillows and blankets building the walls of my cocoon and I think, “Now how will bringing my stepdad make me get out of bed?”

That’s when I feel my duvet drifting away, exposing my pyjama-clad body to the biting cold; my chest, stomach, arms, legs and finally, “No not the toes! Anything but cold toes!”

I hop out of bed and leap about like a hopping, leaping thing and I hear my mom cackle and grin in the light of victory. Her daughter is out of bed. She leaves the room gleaming, grinning, giggling. It just goes to show how little she knows about me. I walk to the other side of my room, bend over and pick up my little bundle of a duvet and promptly climb back into bed.

No wonder I’m now at boarding school.