I wake up like clockwork.

I wake up like clockwork early in the morning.

Maybe it’s my subconscious telling my body, “you better wake up!  There isn’t much time left!”…I don’t really know.  I don’t know when you cross some invisible line in the sand with your own mortality…although it’s a comforting thought to claim “middle age” while in your 50’s…that should put me right at 104 if the middle part holds true.

It may be my subconscious only telling me that the window between 5 and 6 in the morning is a good shot at some true quiet time.

This morning my 3-year-old is up with me.

He has work to do, also.  He has a little robot that turns into a spaceship looking thing that must transform every 2 minutes.  So…in between the quiet time my window affords…he yells out every so often, “Put his legs on!!  Put his legs on!!”.

He is not a mood buster….he is a mood maker.

He is watching “The Banana Splits” on TV…and I am writing this.

Maybe reruns are the fountain of youth? Pour it all into the old cartoons like some hi-tech Picture of Dorian Grey…we’ll live forever as long as syndication and a satellite system holds out. Nobody told me that was true…but nobody told me it wasn’t, either.

We’ll see what happens.

There was a woman who thought that if she kept adding on to her house that she’d never die.  We used to visit her house sometimes when we lived in California.  It was close to where we lived and easy to get to…so we went a couple of times.

The “Winchester House” (that was what it’s called) gave a little guy an alternate worldview for sure.  You don’t have a really refined sense of mortality when you are 5 years old…so the concept of living forever seems plausible if you can hire enough contractors to keep the ball rolling.

She did eventually die.  The house is pretty big…but apparently not big enough.

I haven’t presented the “live forever, cartoon watching link” to my son yet.  Why muddy the water for him with some untested hypothesis?  You have to let a child grow up their own way…with some guidance and protection and a sense that they are in a safe place. Too many existential questions probably feel premature to a 3-year-old with a never-ending robot.

I don’t think that looking at the big picture with the end in mind does anybody any good.  We have this moment and it’s sometimes hard enough to just get through what’s at hand….why pile any “might happens” on our plate?

I have a pretty big appetite for angst…so my plate is full of nervous expectations…but my better nature tells me to just keep transforming the robot..and to have another cup of coffee.