Wake Up Call

I wonder how you wake up in the morning? Do you leap into action the minute your eyes open, or do you come round slowly, allow body and mind to gradually acclimatise after a night in dreamland? Perhaps you have an 'inner clock' that wakes you at a time you choose, or you might be one of those people who need anything up to three varying alarm clocks to shock you into greeting the day. Maybe you have young children, who provide the most efficient wake up call ever created.

I would imagine almost everybody, at some time in their life, could identify with the poem I'm going to post today. My little blue book (where all my original, handwritten 'stuff' was collected before the days of computer) presented me with it as I leafed through its faded pages the other day, and the subject has been coming closer to the surface ever since. I've recently read several blogs whose authors have been at some kind of crossroads in their lives; decisions have needed to be made, and often the way forward has not been easy to see.

When I was still at art college, I imagined I would go on to teacher training college, and indeed, I eventually had a provisional acceptance by Reading University to do just that. At twenty three, I thought my life was mapped out.

However, life and circumstances had other ideas, and I got a bad dose of influenza instead of the final NDD ( National Diploma in Design) I'd been working towards for five years. The principal of the college would have let me repeat the last year, to sit the exam again, but made it abundantly clear in his opinion, that by then, a twenty four year old, female student, was more than likely heading towards marriage, rather than a teaching career. He was an out and out MCP, on reflection, but I was too naive to recognise the symptoms, and cowered under his eagle eye.

So you can place me, and this poem, in the setting which left me wondering what would come next.

Back To Reality

Head on a pillow,
lids lowered;
light breathing
blowing the cobwebs of night.
Consciousness surfacing.
Flutter of eyes opening.
Panic.
Orientation.
Then memory flooding
and realization
of who
and where
and why
and how.

Only problem is
what now?