One of Life's Little Ironies... A Christmas Observation

It's Christmas morning, and I'm sitting in front of the computer.  On my days off, this is one of my morning rituals... Get up, put on my bath robe, stroll to the computer and read for a while.  It's a soothing way to wake up at my own speed.  This morning I was up at 5:30 AM.

As I sat down to the glow of the computer monitor, and took that first sip of my morning coffee, I saw the Christmas tree lights blinking in my peripheral vision, and had a flashback to a time long passed, and experienced one of life's little ironies...  I thought back to my days as a young parent, when my children would come into my bedroom well before the sun came up, full of excitement and anticipation...  "It's Christmas!  Can we open our presents?"  Though I look back with fondness now, I very well recall how annoyed I was at the time.  Dammit kids, I just got to sleep, I'd think.  Don't you know that?

I remember one specific year, when my older daughter came into my bedroom in the middle of the night, full of wonder... "Dad... it's Christmas!  Let's open presents!"

"Kid, it's still night time.  We can't open presents until your sister wakes up."  In the fog of my half-sleep, I thought I was being pretty clever, and expected that my command would purchase another couple of hours of well-deserved rest.

Moments later, I heard the same daughter in the next room, whispering "Sissy, wake up.  It's Christmas."  That didn't work out exactly as planned.

Over the subsequent years, I developed a ritual that was tantamount to torture for the children.  I told them that daddy got to sleep in until 7:00 AM on Christmas.  This, of course, never exactly worked out, because invariably the little ones would start creeping in around 5:00 asking "Dad, is it 7:00 yet?" or "Dad, can we pleeeeeaaaaassse open presents now??"  But I did stick to my guns and make them wait.  Basically, we all suffered... they suffered with anticipation, and I suffered from lack of sleep.  But make no mistake, I'm grinning as I relive those days, and write the memories down.

Then I briefly thought back further... to my own youth, remembering how I would wake up before dawn, full of excitement, and how I did the same thing to my own parents.

Now the kids are grown and making their own memories.  My older daughter has a child of her own, and there's no doubt in my mind that he was up very shortly after midnight, saying "Mom!  It's Christmas!  Can we open presents?"

Meanwhile, I've now been getting up early for years.  I've been doing it daily for so long that even on weekends, I'm usually up before the sun.  THIS is that life irony I mentioned earlier... when I was a young dad, I wanted to sleep in, but the excitement of the children prevented that from happening.  Now that the kids are grown, I have the opportunity to sleep in, but I can't.