I am not by nature an early riser. I have been far more of a night owl than a morning lark in my sixty years on this planet. And yet, as a school teacher and father and dog owner (which also means dog-walker and dog-poop-picker-upper), I have been forced to become an early riser. But I like to look at sunrises. We are never guaranteed waking up alive in the morning. One day soon I anticipate waking up quite dead. But in the meantime, I am still looking at sunrises and collecting them. Proof that I still ain’t dead.
And I am trying hard this winter to think and write about other things than Donald Trump. As bad as he is to have to deal with, life goes on… at least, until it doesn’t. And each day I am older and wiser than I was the day before… at least by a day’s worth, if not more. Good things still happen even if they don’t happen as often as they used to… or as much as the bad things still happen.
I am watching more than one kind of sunrise. This statue was molded and fired in a kiln at school by my daughter, a rising sunshine of art talent. In fact, all my kids can draw… I wonder where that comes from?
My daughter sometimes draws weird cartoon characters like this boy with a band-aid on his nose riding on a dinosaur/dragon/thing with a laser eye and a mechanical right leg. That is about as goofy as it gets. And I wonder, too, where the heck does that come from?
And you can stop shouting at the computer screen. I only pretend to be as thick as rock for comedic effect. In truth, only my head and my really old unwashed socks are that hard and dense and thought-resistant.
But I keep going while I can. There is still lots to do… novels to write… pictures to draw… dogs to walk and poop to pick up… being retired, even being forcibly retired for health reasons, is like a bag of Saturdays, with no real work responsibilities hanging over my head except for the ones I put there for myself.
And I keep on collecting sunrises, one after another… simply because I still can.
Catch a Falling Star 