THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NIGHT AND DAY

I love the morning air, unless I am in rush hour traffic. Morning is my favorite time of day. However, in the summer, I wish it would arrive a few hours later.

Being a morning person is a great advantage when living in the Arizona dry desert climate, because if it’s 75 degrees at 5:00 a.m., it will be 30 degrees hotter at noon. So that’s why I try to beat the sunrise and walk my two miles in the mountains very early. At 6:00 a.m. I know I am awake, because my bed is made and I’m not in it.

Ellen Goodman said, “Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience---unless they are still up.” She must have been a night person. My friend, and former co-author, Lynne is a night person. She does her most creative work long after mid-night. Whenever we would have an early morning business meeting, she would accuse me of being “perky.” She hated perky. What can you expect from a person who keeps the same hours as owls, crickets, frogs and wolves?

The only time I could fake being a night person was when I visited my son in New York City. The three-hour time difference traveling east made me look good. At 2:00 a.m. his friends would say, “It’s amazing that your mom can party so late.” He never told them that it took me a week to recuperate when the hours were reversed after returning home. The only good thing about being a night person is that if you go to bed at 4:00 a.m., you only have to brush your teeth once.

Yes, in the summer I get going extremely early, and by 3:00 p.m. I have already been up for 10 hours. Then it is well–advised to take a nap. Even the hyperactive Martha Stewart catnaps now and then, but she says that she thinks while napping, so not to waste any time. Sometimes when I am baking, I think I also catnap, because I forget there’s a cake in the oven---but then I am no Martha Stewart.

I credit my napping ability to my Kindergarten teacher, because on my report card she wrote, “Esther is a bad rester.” She probably needed a nap. In those days, I didn’t enjoy that activity, so I scooted my nap rug next to my little boyfriend and bothered him. If it’s any consolation, I took her admonition to heart, a couple of years ago. However, I do take credit for encouraging her poetic skills---limited as they were.

So the moral of this tale is that if you are a day person you can take a nap, but if you are a night person, you can’t take a nap because people will think you are going to sleep.

Esther Blumenfeld (“A day without sunshine is like; you know, night.”) Steve Martin