(written Nov 22, 2020)
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
Groggily I lean over and hit snooze on my cell phone. Seriously, it can’t be 5am already. And why in the world did I set an alarm when I could sleep in?
Five minutes later. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
My inner child starts to resent the adult who crawls out of bed to use the bathroom and brush his teeth. The kid in me starts to argue.
“Come on. Go back to bed. We’ve got two hours.” A slight pause as we look at the clock and calculate when we need to be in the lobby to catch the van to the airport. “Wait,” he whines, “we actually have three hours.” The voice in my head gets louder. “There’s NO reason to be up in the middle of the night.”
“It’s not night, it’s morning,” my adult calmly clarifies.
“It’s dark out!” my inner child screams. “Darkness means bedtime.”
“It’s our last night in Hawaii. We’re going to watch the sunrise while doing yoga by the beach.” My adult has spoken. There is no negotiation.
We spit in the sink and rinse our mouth.
My inner child will not relent. The argument increases to a full debate. “First off, there’s a mountain on the east side of the island. We won’t even get to see a sunrise.” There’s venom in his voice when I hear him emphasize the words sunrise. “Secondly, we did yoga less than ten hours ago watching the sunset. Why do we have to do both? We were up late playing Dungeons and Dragons online with our friends. It’s not like we won’t be back to Hawaii in a few days anyway.” My inner child finishes with a cantankerous wail in my head that emotionally feels like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Go back to bed!!”
The debate is one-sided. My adult holds a boundary and does not engage with my inner child as we tie our shoes. Finally, after a long pause he replies, “Trust me.”
