"What's That Again?"

Don is bi-polar. For those of you who already have had the experience, ‘nuff said. For those of you who don’t know what that is, you’ve been blessed beyond measure.

For example: At 4:30 this morning, I started to roll over while still sleeping, and while half-way done with my turn, Don said, in a loud, clear, wide-awake voice “How would you like for me to read to you a few chapters about rare and unusual trees?” I halted in mid-turn, opened my eyes, and demanded “WHAT????” And Don repeated himself, word for word. So I completed my turn onto my other side before replying, “Donald, I think NOT. I am STILL SLEEPING.”

This is not a rare occurrence. This happens about once every week, before I have even become ambulatory. But yet another thing that disturbs me about the bi-polar thing in the morning is that once I have finally dragged myself out of the bed, staggered into the livingroom, and propped myself into an upright position against the back of a chair, Don presses a steaming cup of coffee into my hands and begins an immediate tirade of lists of chores that he is thinking about doing that particular day. While I am still staring at the cup of coffee in my hands trying to figure out what to do with it. I mean, I have trouble struggling to the surface enough just to remember that I must: 1. Place the cup to my lips, and; 2. Swallow. I’m serious. I have had, for most of my life, great difficulty shaking the cobwebs out of my head when I wake up in the morning. And most of the time Don gets upset with me when I stare at him with that blank look on my face for the longest time before finally asking him what it is that he has been rambling on and on about for the past half an hour. I do this by pulling my gaze away from the coffee cup just long enough to utter "Whaa-aaaaa...?"

While it is true that Don is on medication for this hereditary ailment, there seems to not be one single pill for “Not Being Able To Wake Up Immediately” syndrome. However, I remember the Easter Morning Service at the Lutheran Church in Jordan, and how, if you were not aware of what was going to happen next, you would be sure to wake up REAL QUICK-like.

We would have live piano music being played while folks filed in, smiling and nodding to one another as they found places to sit. It was usually jam-packed on Easter Sunday morning, with extra chairs even sitting out in the entryway. And as people were shifting around in their seats making room for a few others, pulling out their hymn books, pulling off their coats and in general not paying attention, a lady would stride purposfully towards the front of the church, holding a pair of cymbals, turn and face the congregation, pause for the signal, and C-R-A-S-H those cymbals together with a sound that would wake the dead! I mean, it was nearly enough to make you jump clean out of your skin if you weren’t prepared for it. Which I was not. And at that very same instant, the black silk shroud that draped the giant cross suspended above the alter would fall to the ground as if by magic! I’m not kidding you! And there weren't any strings or wires atached, either!!! And then the whole congregation would rise and begin singing "Christ our Lord has risen to-da-ay..." It was real dramatic, and heart stopping, besides.

Sometimes in the morning, I still wake up confused just as I did that first Easter Sunday morning when Marilyn nearly gave me a heart attack right in the Hope Lutheran Church in Jordan Minnesota. Only these days, it is Don and his loud wide-awake morning ramblings instead of cymbals.

But it still has the same effect, on me.

Chicken Man: "He's everywhere! He's everywhere!"