RISE AND SHINE. UP AND ADAM.”I groaned, not only at my father’s bad joke—when I was younger I’d misunderstood the phrase “up and at ’em” and had asked my father who this “Adam” character was, to his lasting enjoyment—but because it was a Sunday morning, it was my day off, and I wanted to spend it sleeping in. “No,” I mumbled into my pillow.“Come on,” my father said, and I heard the rasp of metal on metal as he pushed open my curtains, the decorative rings sliding on the iron bar, and it suddenly got a lot brighter in my room. “Time to get up.”“What?” I asked, squeezing my eyes tightly shut, not understanding what was happening. “No. Why?”“Surprise,” he said, and then he tickled the bottoms of my feet, which were sticking out from under the sheet. I felt myself giggling uncontrollably—that had always been my most ticklish spot. I yanked my feet under the covers as I heard my father leave the room. “Meet you outside,” he called. “Five minutes.”I tried to keep my eyes shut, and attempted to return to the dream that now seemed very far away—but I knew it was futile.
