Waking Up

Lately I've been waking up a lot, usually between three and four in the morning. I wake up, and I think. First I think about my oldest daughter someplace in Africa. Then I imagine a pretty neighborhood here in New Jersey where I hope someday she’ll live.

I think, too, about my other daughter, in college. If it’s a Saturday night, I wonder if she’s out somewhere, and I hope she’s safe. I also hope she will recover from the tragic death of her friend and be a happy college student once more, though I know she probably won’t.

And I think about my son, about how gentle and vulnerable and stubborn and sweet he is. I wonder if he did his homework, and sometimes I cross the hall to check on him. The sight of his lean teenage body all twisted up in his blanket comforts me.

If I get lucky and wake up when the red numbers of the clock glow 2:22, or 3:33, or 4:44, I get to make a wish. I wish for the well-being of all my children. Then I calmly drift back to sleep.

Teresita Blake
Maplewood, New Jersey

Days after turning thirty-one, I found a lump in my breast. A biopsy led to a lumpectomy, more tests, another biopsy, and a terrible decision that no one should ever have to face. The cancer had been caught early, but it seemed to be in more than one spot, possibly in both breasts. The doctors couldn’t guarantee that a more thorough lumpectomy and radiation would leave me cancer free. In my mind, the choice became whether to save my breasts or my life. I chose my life.

During those months of tests, my eyes were opened to the incredible safety net of family and friends I had. They did their best to remind me that I was not entirely alone. While I was awake, it worked, but when I slept, I experienced nightmares and woke sobbing. In one dream I was being repeatedly shot, unable to move as I took one bullet after another. I awoke more determined than ever not to be a helpless victim.

As the date of my surgery drew closer, I told a friend that I was afraid of falling asleep and waking up without my breasts. Her response was “What if you think of it as falling asleep and waking up without cancer?”

I took my friend’s advice, and I did fall asleep and wake up without cancer. I should feel better, but I admit that I still sometimes cry myself to sleep.

Dawn Burman
Cincinnati, Ohio

I used to love waking up before dawn, getting that first smoke and first cup of fresh-brewed French roast, and letting my six hounds out to do their business. The dogs could always make me chuckle with their rough play. One after the other would break off from the rest and come to me for a pat on the head.

That was eight years ago. I reckon those dogs are all dead by now.

This morning I woke up from a beautiful dream of forests, summer breezes, and a woman’s touch to find myself in a ten-by-ten-foot cell with the stink of five other men. The prison system has forbidden all tobacco products, and coffee will probably be next. I’m almost fifty years old with ten more years to go. I have no home, no money, no prospects.

Waking up in here takes a piece out of your soul. Sometimes I wonder: why bother getting up at all? But the fact is my heart is still beating, the blood still courses through my veins, and the pressure on my bladder says I either get up or lie here and piss the bed.

Charles Tisron
Raybrook, New York

It is 1960, and I am certain John F. Kennedy will win the upcoming presidential election. In televised debates against Richard Nixon, Kennedy knows when to smile, his hair is just right, and his eyes are quick and intelligent. He says we have a voice in how our country works and can make it better.

I am eleven and attend a boarding school where nobody recognizes Kennedy as the hero he is. One weekend my mother and stepfather take me to a Kennedy rally, where I get a picture postcard of Kennedy that I keep under my pillow so I can talk to him and give him encouragement. The headmistress tells me that a young Catholic can never become president. I disagree. Miracles can happen. The other girls laugh at me and say I have a crush on him.

On election night I lie awake and listen to the other girls snore. “You can do it, John,” I say into the darkness. Kennedy wants Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Negroes to be equal to whites under the law. When he gets elected, I’m going to ask him if he’ll give Manhattan back to the Indians. I keep my radio close to my ear. At 3 A.M., Kennedy is projected to be the winner. I did it. I can’t contain my excitement. I jump down onto the cold floor and wake up every single girl with the news.

Stephanie Hart
New York, New York

As a child I loved animals. One day, while playing in my yard, I saw several neighborhood children laughing loudly and throwing dirt into a trash barrel in their drive. Curious, I walked over and saw a terrified gray cat cowering in the sooty bottom of the barrel. I wanted to protest, but the kids were older and bigger than I was. I left, relieved that at least it wasn’t my cat, Topsy Turvy, who was black.

At home my father asked me what the kids were doing. I told him, concluding with the good news that it wasn’t Topsy Turvy. He immediately crossed the street, ordered the kids to back away, and lifted the cat out of the barrel.

“How could you do such a cruel thing?” he hollered at them.

One boy answered that they were just having fun. Besides, it was only a stupid stray.

My father hugged the cat to his chest. “It doesn’t matter whose cat it is. You shouldn’t be so cruel.”

My father brought the cat home, and as we cleaned the ashes off, the gray cat became black, and the stray became Topsy Turvy.

We gave her milk, and she took a nap in my arms. While she slept, I awoke from the idea that when I encounter suffering, I should feel relief if it’s not someone I know and love.

Miriam C. Murphy
Hamden, Connecticut

At the age of eight, I wanted to demonstrate to my parents that I was big enough to cross the street by myself. I looked right and then left — no car in sight — and ran across while they watched. Safe on the other side, I yelled proudly, “I told you I could.”

Before I’d finished the sentence, a bicyclist knocked me unconscious.

Like many traditional Chinese people, my mother and father rarely showed affection. I never saw them hold hands or hug their children. So when I opened my eyes in the hospital and found them hovering over me with attentive, loving smiles, I was confused, but happy.

Years later we immigrated to the U.S. Every time I visited my parents in Washington, D.C., I would give them a long, tight hug. Mom usually giggled and said, “Not again.” Dad would try to push me away, saying, “Enough.”

Their words didn’t fool me. They wore the same expressions I’d seen that day I’d woken up in the hospital.

Helen Chen
Rochester, Minnesota

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