A first look at George, Luke’s (the main character) father. It’s a big day for him, so I wanted to emphasize that by relating it in detail, while throwing in some extra details to round out his character. He is likely to end up playing somewhat of a foil to Luke, so I want him well-rounded.

George’s eyes snapped open. Another bad dream. He’d been having too many of those of late. He tried, as always, to remind himself that what he dreamed, whether good or bad, was almost entirely out of his control. Almost entirely. He could never shake the idea that if he could just control his mind a little better when he was awake, then he could do it better when he was asleep. But if controlling one’s mind wasn’t the work of a lifetime, he didn’t know what was.

The body, fortunately enough, George found much easier to control. Even while still feeling the effects of a restless night, George was able to sit up from bed, stand, rotate, and kneel down at the side of the bed again to say a morning prayer. In his youth, he might have just rolled over and flopped down onto his knees, but now, he liked to imagine that his advancing age at least brought with it a modicum of dignity.

Standing, George noticed that his wife was still asleep. Good. For so many years she had struggled with insomnia, such a sterile term for a daily battle with ones own body for a simple measure of sleep. Nothing had taught him better that he his usual amount of control over his own body was not something to be taken for granted, or something to feel superior about. His wife had a will of iron, but to her, falling asleep had seemed just as difficult for her as controlling his dreams was for him. That’s probably because falling asleep wasn’t really about her body, but rather about her mind.

As George showered and shaved, he tried to keep his mind off of those dark years with his wife after his youngest son had been born. There had, of course, been many more problems than the insomnia, although that certainly would have been enough. Of course, as he tried to shift his thoughts away from those dark days with his wife, the thoughts drifted to his son whose birth seemed to have played some role in bringing them on. Of course, Luke deserved no blame for whatever shift in hormones or brain chemistry his birth had brought with it into his mother’s body. But he still, to this day, couldn’t help but wonder if that dark period had some part in putting his son in the position he was now.

George shook his head as he dried off and moved to get dressed. There was nowhere good for this line of thinking to go. He knew that from past experience. It just took him around and around the same dark path, with no insights to be granted.

He slid open the heavy door on the large closet that they had installed years ago, at the urging of his wife. At first, he had thought that much too much thought had gone into how their clothes should be stored. Now he had to admit that he had grown to appreciate the sense of occasion granted to each morning from sliding aside a large door on well oiled wheels to reveal a well organized closet of clothes. This feeling of occasion was only helped by the fact that basically everything he owned was now suits and white shirts.

As he had moved higher and higher in church hierarchy, the duties and occasions that came along with the position also increased. Gradually, the more casual button-down shirts and khaki pants that he had taken to wearing when he had first opened up a law firm here in town had been pushed aside and reduced in number and the suits that he had worn as a corporate lawyer had begun to reemerge. He had even felt compelled to move his ever-growing tie collection in a more conservative direction. Sometimes, even on days when he didn’t think he would have any church duties, he still put on a suit and tie, when something in the back of his mind told him a suit might be needed later on. Sometimes that feeling was right, and sometimes it was wrong, but it was right often enough for him to have learned to trust it when it came.

But today there was no doubt. If there was ever a day to where a suit, today was the day. In fact, for the first time in years, he had bought a new suit, a nice one, nicer than anything else he had, certainly, although certainly less expensive than some of the suits his fellow lawyers had worn back when he had worked for the big firms. He chose that suit now, along with a new white shirt and red tie. He caught himself admiring the suit for a few moments too long and immediately felt foolish for doing so. Instead, he shifted his focus to looking for any signs of dirt or loose stitching. Finding none, he began to dress. When he finished, he glanced over one more time to see that his wife was still sleeping, quietly opened the door and walked downstairs to his office.