Waiting for My Eyes to Adjust

I start my day early--at dark:thirty--to keep on Eastern Time work schedules.

And I have a ritual that gets me started:
1. turn on the light - I can't sleep with the light on, so light helps me know it's time to get out of bed
2. splash water on my face - It has to be cold water to shock my system from the netherworld of semiconsciousness.
3. brush my teeth - now my mouth is awake, even if my eyes aren't
4. take meds - more on that in a later blog - thank God for meds!!
5. deodorant - preventative
6. perfume - a light scent that makes me know I'm getting ready for my Big Girl job
7. get dressed - once I've put my socks on, I'm ready for the day, with one exception:
7. make-up - I'm not fooling anybody at this point. It's just an effort not to scare small children and animals. And it tells me that my business day has begun.

Remember, it's still at least 3 hours before sunrise where I live, so the last thing before going downstairs to my desk is to turn off the bedroom light. It is then that I stand for a few seconds in total darkness until my eyes adjust to the night light in the hall so that I can make my way down the stairs to the first thing of my business day--coffee!

Being a charter member of P.O.E.M. (Professional Organization of English Majors--shout out to Garrison Keillor), the metaphor of waiting for my eyes to adjust resonates in my soul. 

That's what I've been doing since the first week of October! Waiting for the condo to look like home to me. Waiting for my room to be my room. Waiting for the view out the window--breathtaking though it is--to be the look of home. Waiting for the newness to wear off. Waiting to feel a sense of place, a sense of belonging, a sense of "rightness" to it all.

Friends say that it will take time and I know that. And, once things are settled from Back There, and I "have my things around me" (Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man), especially Mother's piano, Here will begin to feel like home. There are many "once"s that may have to happen MORE than once. I get that, both in my head and in my heart.

So, here I stand, in the dark, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Maybe that's why they've been water logged recently....