To Pee And Not To Be

The urge to pee drives me out of bed at 1:44 a.m., but when I return, depleted, some long-lost friends are awake within my head and beg me to stay up. “Your time is not as long as it used to be. If you go before telling our story, so do we…” (Subscribe to the blog)

Aunt Norma the cricket slayer takes my hand and tugs me away from the bed. “C’mon, honey,” she drawls in her soft, laughing southern voice.

Ana the valiant takes my other hand. “Was my cause not yours – equality for all! I died once. Will you let me die forever?”

Many others are at my back in a gathering crowd that pushes me toward the writing table downstairs.

I plead with them to let me have the mattress for at least an hour and 16 minutes more. Three a.m. is the earliest I can arise without being forced to nap in the afternoon. It’s a serious consideration. Yesterday I read a study about how sleepiness in the afternoon may be a sign of Alzheimers. I fear erosion more than death.

Antonio the coffin maker whispers in my ear. “Do you remember that night when we drank too much cusha and wandered in the cemetery under a full moon that made the whitewashed graves glow?”

Morse the war hero prods me in the spine. “Courage, my friend! Have you forgotten that I taught you to look fearlessly into the mouth of an exploding volcano? There are inspirational lessons to be shared – if you choose to sit and deliver them!”

I feel a cool frothy surge of water across my ankles as I stand in the sand of a Laguna beach alone on a night of phosphorescence when mussels open their shells and the entire reef lights up. Should only my eyes see the light?

The clamor grows but I resist being shoved down the stairs. 

Will you make me stumble and fall in your urgency? I hear you. 

Tea, not coffee, is appropriate for this hour. High octane would burn me out by dawn. I snap on the electric water pot and grab for the Rooibos red tea. Abby taught me about this gentle drink when she returned from Africa with stories from 50 countries and a gift of tea bags.

The tea steeps in a delicate cup I bought in Guatemala at a hotel on a lake surrounded by volcanoes. Those heights are full of stories not yet told. I know some of them. The warm cup and I move to the couch. It’s too early for the hard chair at the table where serious writing is done. 

“Tell about the time we went over a waterfall in our kayaks,” says Mike, my dear river pal.

“Tell about my son – shot through the heart on the steps of a church,” pleads the Mayan peasant Rafael. “Si,” says Hector the village poet. He witnessed the tragedy, but wants me to write about luciernagas – fireflies that lit his soul and inspired his own words.

As my friends gather around me, I put down the cup and pick up the pen. I start writing:

“The urge to pee drives me out of bed…”