Life, actually…

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UP BEFORE DAYLIGHT

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Believe it or not, I was once an Alabama young’un.

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In those days my young’unhood attitudes change frequently, as un-young’unhood approaches ever so slowly but ever so surely.

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Sweet remembrance:

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I’m back in time. Today, as a kid, I can’t wait to rise with the Sun. The first  ray of daylight empowers me. I am ready to embrace the day. My Dad arises at five a.m. and is off to work. Mom is puttering about in the kitchen, preparing a second breakfast, this one for herself and us kids.

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I pull on pants and shirt, run barefoot to the open screened window, check to confirm the day. I can see sparkled dew on morning leaves, errant butterflies plying their trade, chattering birds scanning the dew for clueless worms.

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Another day begins in the paradise of young’unhood.

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Being young means my mind is lighter, not yet burdened with responsibilities beyond a few daily chores. Village elders and dedicated parents carry the load, so that I can experience a few years of carefree wonder.

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As teenagedom slowly approaches, I begin to feel the weight of life’s possibilities, life’s confusions, life’s upcoming pleasures.

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A few doubts and fears creep about. I have to start the process of taking on the world as it is slowly handed off to me by aging adults.

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I experiment with the idea of Denial. Just pretending everything is fine often makes everything fine.

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 As a teenager I am not as anxious to get up in the morning. Why does anyone want to rise at 6 a.m.? Getting up means facing teachers and bullies and acne and more chores.

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I pretty much dance around these adolescent attitudes until one summer when I go to work as a laborer on a housing construction project.

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This means getting up earlier than ever on Monday morning, riding in a pickup truck with other workers for two hours, then spending the week away from home sloughing about in blazing heat. I learn to take orders, do heavy lifting, navigate my way through the startling pathways of rough-and-tumble tough-guy culture.

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For a wimpy kid like me, all filled with writing and literature and scholarly intake and storytelling, this is quite a challenge. But, true to my nature, I absorb this educative experience and turn it all into stories. I hone my observation skills without even knowing it at the time.

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I survive the labor world and, just one year later, find the job I really want, far away from strain and heat stroke. I become a seventeen-year-old on-air radio personality.

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Imagine that.

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Within a few months, I turn into a semi-adult. Like my father, I rise before daylight—this time willingly, with enthusiasm—and rush to my job as sign-on announcer at a radio station, then later as television host. 

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I suddenly begin transitioning into the role of village elder.

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Does the heft of responsibility wear me down? Sometimes yes. But, like the kid I once was, I still check the morning dew, scope out the early birds, feel sorry for the early worms, embrace the beckoning sunshine.

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All this happens a long, long time ago. Many adventures and misadventures occur since then. A sign of encroaching maturity on my part is the fact that I won’t bore you with all those intervening stories.

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Not quite yet, anyhow.

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I was once an Alabama young’un. Maybe you, too, were once an Alabama young’un.

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Try to remember

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