Letter No. 20: Before My Feet Touched the Floor

For two mornings in a row, I stayed in bed longer than usual. Not long enough to constitute a new discipline, but enough to make me curious about what was happening in that space between waking and getting out of bed. So I lay beneath the covers and listened.

The property was already awake. Hundreds of birds live around us—robins, geese, doves, and more varieties of little chirpers than I could name. Across the creek, mooing cows occupied the property on the other side. Beyond it all, I could barely hear the highway, though cars were screaming past on their way to town.

The raccoons were noisier still. We have a large contingent of them, and I am continually surprised by how many different sounds they can make. On one of those mornings, a fox and coyotes passed through the property as well. In short, it wasn’t silent. From the sound of it, their feet had all hit the proverbial floor before my heels scooted across the hardwood.

While all of that was happening, I stretched there without getting out of bed, putting on appropriate clothing, or heading downstairs to make a cup of decaf. There was no routine to follow and nothing to count. I simply stretched.

It felt great. The experience was so ordinary that I almost missed it.

People have been stretching after waking for as long as people have been waking. Yet something about those mornings made me pay attention.

Stretching often keeps company with yawning. One study examining the relationship among sleep, yawning, and stretching found that yawning occurred most frequently during the hour before sleep and the hour after waking. Stretching was especially common during the hour after waking, and the two frequently appeared together. There is even a word for the combination: pandiculation.

Pandiculation sounds like a condition that should be discussed with a physician, but most of us have managed it on our own before breakfast.

Scientists continue to debate exactly why we yawn. We do know that yawning and stretching often appear at a threshold. We are no longer asleep, but we are not yet fully engaged with the day. The mind may be awake while the body is still making the journey. A stretch lengthens what has remained still. A yawn interrupts one state before another has completely arrived.

Neither looks particularly productive, which may be why I have usually given the day credit for beginning when I get out of bed. Covers off. Body upright. Movement underway. Anything before that can appear to be a delay.

Those two mornings made me reconsider where a beginning begins. My beginning was quieter, happening beneath the covers where no one could see it. My body was not refusing the day. It was preparing to carry it.

There are movements that happen before visible movement. Readiness has its own gestures. Before we bear weight, we adjust our stance. Before we say something difficult, we take a breath. Before we step into what is waiting, something within us may need room to lengthen. Some preparation looks like hesitation only because it happens before anyone can see the work.

Formation may happen there, too—in the nearly invisible ways we cross from one condition into another. We are shaped not only by what we do once we arrive, but also by how we enter.

Eventually, the day makes a persuasive argument, and we have to get up. Responsibilities do not usually disappear because we have discovered pandiculation. But not every beginning announces itself like geese, raccoons, or cars racing toward town. Some beginnings make almost no sound at all.

The stretch was not a delay in beginning the day. It was how my body began it.

Until next Sunday…

George

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