The Magic Hours

Early this morning I was pondering the "wee hours".

I know that on New Year's Day everybody but me stayed up until then, visiting friends or attending church group parties, talking and eating and playing crazy board games. (Well, some families get a little wilder than that, but in my family that's about as wild as it gets.) I guess the "wee hours" are those low-digit numbers like one or two, those peaceful times when nobody is awake to call and ask you to do something for them. (They don't call because they think you are sleeping like normal sane people should.)

In my case, they would be right. I feel like ten o'clock is only good for nestling down in bed with a good book or crossword puzzle, preparatory to falling asleep and quietly resting until the "wee hours" when my husband finally comes to bed, having watched TV in the silent house, fallen asleep a couple of times, and awakened with a crick in his neck, but bearing that great satisfaction of having reached the magic hours before he went to bed...no idle early-to-bed sleeper is he!

Now, I would change the meaning of "wee" hours. I'd call them the "oui" hours. Yes! For me, those wonderful hours begin a little before six in the morning. I'm up, dressed, sipping coffee...and it's so quiet in the house. I check my e-mail, read a daily devotional, look at the blogs of all those people who were inexplicably up during the darkness typing away, and then check my puzzle pirate's apothecary stall on Viridian to see if I need to put in a bid for more yarrow or elderberries. ( I know it sounds crazy, but it's too complicated to explain.) If someone commented on a picture of me on facebook, I dash over there and read it. Then I usually poke them. They don't know it, of course; they are still sleeping too. All this before anyone stirs at all...except possibly my married daughter. She usually calls around seven o'clock. It's a morning ritual. I answer the phone in the den while her father--my groggy husband--grabs the phone by the bed and tries to sound like he has been up for at least ten minutes. She tells him to hang up because she really wants to talk to me. He falls asleep again (though not quite as soundly), and I have a little breakfast chat about the state of the world and how it has changed now that my grandchildren are rearranging it. Ah, I love those magic hours.

Of course occasionally--more often than not, actually--my two college kids are home. They too have "wee hours". But they call them "wii" hours. Those can happen anytime...and often happen all the time...at least until the "new" wears off of their latest game.

Ah well, tomorrow I go back to work like a self-respecting human being. My magic hours will dwindle into minutes, but there's always something to anticipate. Tomorrow, it will be a cozy car trip with my three car pool riders all excited about school, and we will listen to Beethoven's First and Seventh Symphonies with the volume up high while the sun comes poking through the mists of morning.