Early Monday mornings, the trash truck comes to our neighborhood. I hear it first when it arrives at the complex next to ours. Since there is a narrow roundabout, the truck has to be backed in, which means that I am woken up by the beep beep beep of the backing up warning sound. Once the truck is in place, two men get out of the truck to retrieve the trash barrels from each unit and empty them into the compacter in the back. For most of the units in the roundabout, this means dragging the barrels across the pavement. To my sleepy brain, it sounds like a rocket taking off into space. Sometimes it is the beeping, and other times it is the barrels, that wakes Goen up. As soon as he registers the sounds, he pops up and climbs over me to get to the window above the bed. He is not as light as he used to be, so this often results in an oomph sound escaping my lips. Of course, none of these is the reason I like Monday mornings.
What I really like about Monday mornings is that, while Goen watches the men below as they noisily roll the garbage cans to their truck, I have a few minutes to rest alone. I can turn over onto my stomach, tuck my arms into my sides, and bury my face in the pillow. I can relax and breathe and pretend that I am waking up slowly, taking my time to enter the day. It may not be quiet, but there is a sort of peacefulness that I feel, laying in bed with my baby at the window above my head. And then the men clatter the barrels back into place, the trash truck drives away, Goen crawls back over me (oomph), and my day begins.