Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

Recently, Mrs. FLJerseyBoy and I -- yielding to the imperatives of age -- joined a health club. It's been a while (like, 20 years) since I did any kind of "working out" to speak of, so the first step was for a trainer to grill me about diet, lifestyle, fitness objectives, all that.

At one point, he asked, "How much sleep do you get a night?"

"Uh, I don't know," I said, "maybe six hours on average. Sometimes I'm up late reading and it comes closer to five."

He peered at me. "And is that enough sleep for you?"

It sounded like a trick question, especially coupled as it was with the brief pause and the lie-detector gaze. "Well, yeah," I insisted, unconvincingly.

It probably is enough sleep for me -- at least as long as I don't approach the five-hour lower limit too many nights in a row. Still, there's something truly blissful about an occasional morning (no matter how early or late the previous night) for which you don't set the alarm at all.

Blissful, yes. It's a guilty bliss, to be sure: Out there in the rest of the world beyond your bedroom, things are going to hell in a thousand different ways. The forces of evil are busy inventing new ways to destroy or at least corrupt everything good in the world; the forces of good are busy repairing the ramparts and launching counterattacks. There are people out there for whom sleep would be a mercy, people intentionally deprived of sleep, even, as well as those with simple insomnia, people too worried about their next meal, people too worried about who might be breaking down the bedroom door, to do so much as nod off. So, you ask yourself, just what the hell gives you the right to an extra hour or two of shut-eye?

I know. I know, okay? I'm just saying.

The very best late mornings are the ones on which Mrs. FLJerseyBoy has gotten up before me; the water's hot on the stove, the cats are fed, the newspaper has been brought in -- and, ideally, there's nothing that needs to be, y'know, dealt with immediately. No burst pipes. No bugs in the kitchen. No bills needing to be paid before the mailman's arrival.

Even on the sleep-in mornings when I wake up first, though, the experience still has its deep satisfactions. There's a parting of the gray curtain which has been in place ever since emerging from the last REM sleep of the night. Sometimes there are tantalizing wisps of dreams falling away as I move to the surface. And most often I wake up on my right side, so the first thing I lay eyes on is my beautiful slumbering wife.

And with no workday to start, no alarm to shriek its interruptions, I can lie there in that sweet moment for another hour -- and never even approach boredom or unease.

It's only when I swing my feet out of bed at last, shake my head, realize that we've accumulated at least four answering-machine messages already -- that's when the guilt sets in and the pleasure tapers off. Fun while it lasted, though. And I sure look forward to the next time.