5:17 a.m. on my sixty-first birthday. A winter draft snuck under the blanket and woke me up.
Decades earlier, at 5:17 a.m., twenty-year-old Dawn had just run out of time to finish the term paper due that day. Thirty-year-old Dawn gulped aspirin to tamp down a hangover . . . caused by the previous night's attempt to outrun her misery. Forty-year-old Dawn rose from her shared bed to agonize about why things had gone so wrong.
5:17 a.m. on my sixty-first birthday I celebrated the realization that nothing had ever gone wrong. I celebrated, watching my mind spin its newest batch of stories.
Decades earlier, at 5:17 a.m., twenty-year-old Dawn had just run out of time to finish the term paper due that day. Thirty-year-old Dawn gulped aspirin to tamp down a hangover . . . caused by the previous night's attempt to outrun her misery. Forty-year-old Dawn rose from her shared bed to agonize about why things had gone so wrong.
5:17 a.m. on my sixty-first birthday I celebrated the realization that nothing had ever gone wrong. I celebrated, watching my mind spin its newest batch of stories.