When Mom comes home for the first time with a new baby, she has no need for an alarm clock. Newborn babies come with their own built in alarm clocks, and they quickly let Mom know when it is time for a feeding or diaper change or comfort. By the time baby number six comes along, Mom definitely needs an alarm clock, especially if the older children are on school schedules of any sort.
My own mother woke her own six kids up by calling up from the bottom of the stairs each morning when it was time to get up and get ready for school "Rise and Shine it's morning time. Time to get up!" She would then whistle several times to make sure we all heard, and then go to the kitchen where she was preparing our cracked wheat or Germaid brand creamed wheat cereal and eggs. She would turn on the radio and we would listen to the morning news report as we ate our breakfast and gathered our things to catch the school bus which arrived in front of our house at 8:00 am sharp every school morning.
When DS1 started 1st grade (I think he was in afternoon kindergarten) we had four children, including a baby, and this Mom definitely needed an alarm clock. We woke to the local radio news station for most of the years that our children were in school. When the oldest children were first in elementary school, they rode the school bus each morning, but after we moved, I usually drove the kids to school each morning. At one point we had six children attending four different schools, and I have spent many, many hours driving children to school over the years. My radio preference during those morning drives was the same local news and talk station that we woke up to every morning, but as the kids grew older, they often tuned the radio to their favorite music stations instead.
Eventually I found that I no longer enjoyed listening to the news every morning, and by the time DD4 was in college, my morning commutes were much much shorter, and my radio station was now tuned to the local classical music station. My alarm switched from the clock radio to my phone, and my long drives were now to take DD4 on the two hour drive to college and back for holidays, and the weekly one hour drive to visit my aging parents.
Today DD4 has now finished her college degree and is back in the city living not too far away. Both parents have now finished their mortal journey and are enjoying each other's company and new challenges in the next world, so my long drives and radio time are much less frequent . . . just the very few minutes it takes me to drive to work and run errands. I still keep the radio tuned to the classical station as I find it feeds my soul.
Do you wake to an alarm? To music? What do you listen to in the car? At home? At work?
I wake to the ocean now but I did use an alarm for years, always tuned to sports talk. As far as the car, there is one radio station in town and we do not pick up any others here. As soon as we drive around a hill on the way out of town, the signal is lost. I've given up listening to the radio in the car and download and listen to podcasts instead. At home, we have no radio but listen online to sporting events that my husband and I enjoy.
ReplyDeleteEmily In Ecuador | Rainbows and the rainy season in Puerto Lopez, Ecuador
So much has changed with radio over the years. I'm glad we still have a fairly good choice of stations we can listen to here. We almost lost our classical music station this year, but so far it looks like the powers that be have decided to continue with it, and I'm very grateful.
DeleteI use my phone for an alarm clock and I pick very loud, exciting musing to try to shock my system into waking since I'm not a morning person. My mother called up to me and my two brothers when we were young but she let us be a little more self-reliant when we each got older. Now that I have to fend for myself as an adult, I don't hardly ever hit the snooze button. Wolf of Words
ReplyDeleteI'm still working on not hitting the snooze button, even just using my phone!
DeleteFor 32 years, I used an alarm clock to get me up and out of the house either to teach or to travel the highways and byways of Florida and New Mexico as a sales rep/consultant for Houghton Mifflin. In retirement, I use either my alarm clock or iPhone to get me up on Sunday morning at 5:30 so that I can finish food for church, but most other mornings, I just get up when I want to . . . usually still early so that I can have my quiet time with the Lord before Frank gets up. I never have been one for waking up to music. Music puts me back to sleep!
ReplyDeleteI have a hard time getting up to music too. Maybe after I retire? I try to get up early enough every morning to spend time reading scripture and praying and contemplating the things that I am grateful for. Of course it works best if I don't stay up to late blogging and/or reading!
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