A turning point....

After another winter night of brief, fitful sleep, my mind slowly registers the cell phone’s cascading digital notes that began again at exactly 5:40 am. More than four years into the daily routine required by my line of work, I still have not adjusted to its hours. While I was never ecstatic about being jarred into activity in the pre-dawn darkness, I lately have begun to regard my phone with a rather unhealthy contempt. On this particular morning, only my body’s waking lethargy prevents me from leaping out of bed to grab it up and fling it screaming into the bedroom wall. Instead I twist my legs out from under the duvet and find my feet clumsily on the floor, raise myself and stumble the three steps to where it sits on the floor, flip it open and manage to shut it up after a few swipes at the keys. I check to see if my wife has been disturbed by this flurry of graceless activity; a brilliant sleeper, she hasn’t stirred. I stand before the door and prepare myself for the second shock of this very early morning.

I turn the knob and gingerly pull the door open a little. As if it has been eagerly waiting for this moment throughout the night, a gust of cold air shoots through the aperture, stinging my skin awake. During winter in our eighty-year old, poorly insulated bungalow, the furnace pours hot air through the vents all night long, but only the bedroom manages to capture any of the heat; the closed bedroom door acts as a dam during the night, holding the temperature inside the bedroom at least ten degrees warmer than anywhere else in the house.

I step out into the heavy chill of the living room and, pulling the bedroom door closed behind me, shuffle quickly across the house to the bathroom. I flip the switch with my eyes closed and feel my way along the wall to the shower while my eyes adjust to the harsh light. Mercifully the shower produces steaming hot water in only a few seconds, and I pull back the curtain and step inside. It is during the next thirty seconds, with my body loosening under the warm, even pressure of the water and my brain detaching itself from an interrupted dream, that I realize something has changed.