October 9, 2002 ~ Rituals

Wednesday.

I used to be a one-alarm waker. At the first beep, I would jolt awake, turn off the alarm, and jump out of bed and go about my morning duties.

All of that changed with Morgan, however. He is a slow waker, preferring several alarms before his actual exit from the bed. Now, every morning, I still jolt awake at the alarm, but I have trained myself to relax, take a breath, reset the alarm for fifteen minutes later, and curl back into Morgan's warmth. He's always half asleep, wrapping his arms around me, mumbling something softly, nuzzling a bit. I love that feeling. Drifting off like that.

Now that the winter is coming and we are rising before the sun does, at the first alarm I turn on the dim bedside lamp to help Morgan adjust to waking and the day. A little light always helps. I will often reset the alarm several times now, growing used to this cycle of waking and sleeping, waking and sleeping, waking and being held for just ten minutes longer.

When Morgan finally gets up, he slowly pulls on the bathrobe and lights two candles, carrying them with him into the bathroom. I follow, loving that flickering glow in our small bathroom. The room fills with steamy warmth from his shower. In those moments, with the warmth, the candles, the sound of running water, nothing can go wrong, the Beatles song "All You Need Is Love" really is true, and the whole world revolves, temporarily, around a man, a woman, and two candles.

I've been savoring our morning ritual more lately, for Morgan has started training with the tech support company where he will be working part-time. It hasn't been easy, and he's only been doing it for three days now. But the company will not allow employees to receive calls or visitors. At all. They will not allow employees to make personal calls unless they are on their lunch break. Morgan and I always have a lot of contact throughout the day, calling each other every few hours to check in, eating together, and such. This has been a strain. I miss him terribly. Those few moments in the morning become precious, a warmth that I pull forward in my mind when loneliness creeps up.

Footnotes:

weather: Wonderfully chilly.

bookmarked: News articles, and also a book called Faces of the Enemy about ways that the enemy of various cultures in various wars has been portrayed in the media and in propaganda. Very interesting stuff.

observation: I sat under a tree this afternoon, waiting for Morgan to pick me up, and, just after I sat down, the sun dipped beneath the cloud cover and everything turned a brilliant golden color.

online journals:

"The sermons at the church has consisted of the Pastor calling homosexuals 'queers' and 'fags' and making a spitting gesture when he mentions the Catholic church. He always states that 6 millions Jews died in the holocaust because the killed Christ. I have heard several reasons why the Jews were killed during the Holocaust. I have always noticed that people with personal prejudices will not place blame on Hitler."

~ Sullivan is off the streets, but in a rather difficult situation.

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