Morning person meets night owl

My husband and I are total opposites in several ways.  The first "problem" we had after we married took me forever to deal with, even though it was a simple thing.  

I am an early morning person.  That's why, even now, when others are sleeping, I'm awake at four o'clock and glad to be alive, because morning is the best time of my day.  So the earlier I get out of bed, the more time I have to enjoy the silence, drink coffee uninterrupted, and think.  When we first married, Cliff was working from 3:30 to midnight, so I left him alone to sleep as much as he needed.  Within the first year of marriage, though, he began working daytime hours.  When it was time to wake up, he liked to doze off awhile and wake up again.  Not just once, but several times.  It was my job to wake him up, and I could not understand why I had to go in and wake him four or five times.  I'd been up long enough that I had thought about a lot of things, so I'd tap his shoulder, he'd say "OK, I'm getting up," turn over and start snoring again.  I had things to tell him, but he went to sleep.  I tried to convey my morning happiness by telling him what a wonderful day it was going to be, which only made him grumpier.  

I tried saying "Rise and shine," but I soon learned he hated that saying.

I made the mistake many times of telling him about some problem with the children, or some bill we didn't owe.  He informed me I should wait until later when he was fully awake.

It took me about ten years to figure things out:  I learned to start waking him up earlier, giving him time to wake up several times.  Before long I tried taking a cup of coffee into the bedroom on his side of the bed on his third or forth wake-up call, and that was the frosting on the cake.  He would roll over on his side to drink his first cup of coffee, almost purring like a kitty cat.  I don't know how he kept it in his mouth laying on his side like that, because I couldn't do it.  But from that time on, we had no problem with me waking him.  One weekend his sister dropped by early; I said, "Cliff will be up soon.  He's in bed drinking his coffee."

She said, "I've gotta see that!" and went running in there; she couldn't believe it.

There was never any more problem with waking Cliff up after I learned what worked.  After that I even sometimes took my guitar into the bedroom and sang a song or two.  He has always liked my singing, and was glad to wake up in that manner, the reason probably being that he can't carry a tune.  But I liked singing and he liked listening.  The kids' bedrooms were upstairs.  My daughter, a while back, told me she remembered waking up and hearing me playing and singing "Bobby McGee" downstairs.   

And that's how I managed to stay married to my husband for fifty-eight years.