No Buzzer to Beat

My body’s alarm clock is pretty dependable during the work week. I can always tell the difference between a simple 1AM roll-over (or a 3AM pillow-flip) and that vague moment when I know without looking to turn off the alarm clock before the buzzer goes off.

This morning was a little different. Before going to bed, I checked a few on-line weather sites and all of them forecast freezing rain by early morning. I went to bed knowing I needed to get up extra early. Around 4AM, I went down to check the driveway. It was damp but not icy, so I crawled back in bed, and to my surprise... fell back asleep.

In a half-dream I heard the light tap dancing of fingers on a plastic keyboard. It was my wife typing on my laptop. Still dreaming a bit, I began wondering why she brought the laptop from the pub table in the family room (where I had left it the night before) into our bedroom. Both of us sometimes write at odd hours, but she never uses the laptop. Oh, well, at least she hadn’t turn on the lamp. I rolled over to try to block out the clicking sounds and bumped right into... my wife. Well, who’s typing? I thought, looking toward the sound coming from the loveseat. No one was there. No one was typing on a laptop.

The faint noise was wet sleet hitting the window in soft unmeasured rhythms (—exactly like the sound my fingers are making at this moment as I type). I put on my robe and slippers, and hurried down to the garage door where I had been 90 minutes before. This time, as I stepped onto the damp cement—now glazed in ice—and without moving my feet at all, I slid slowly to the bottom of our long driveway like a curling stone in slow motion.

(I have a strange affinity for that odd “sport” of curling—it’s the opposite of most sports, it’s mesmerizing, hypnotic to watch. The curlers and sweepers (if that's what they're called) do their tasks with an understated intensity. There’s no buzzer to beat—no sense of a clock at all. It's like a dream. There’s no jumping and screaming in victory—just quiet balance and the glissade of soles on ice gathering stones. It’s a soothing ritual more than a sport.... Anyway, as I was saying....) "I slid slowly to the bottom of our long driveway like a curling stone in slow motion."

I was tempted to slide down the driveway again just for fun, but duty called (besides, I must've looked absurd standing at the dark curb in a robe). Within five minutes I dialed the automated numbers of all four TV networks to close school (along with every other school in the area). I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in this space before, but I’m a school administrator. Trust me; “snow days” are much more of a treat when you learn of them on the other end of a phone beside the bed. Having to get up hours early to check the roads and “decide” takes a good deal of the fun out of it, but on a morning like this when it’s ice instead of snow, all the schools close and there's no second guessing.

So here am I clicking away on my lap top when I could be curling in bed… with no buzzer to beat. I may just do that.
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P.S. Added at 5:00PM same day. By mid-morning the freezing drizzle stopped; by noon; the roads were safe; by late afternoon the sun was shining through a cloudless sky--glad I wasn't the only one to close school this morning.
TK