The Stillness Of The Morning

Quiet.

I love the safety of an early morning. Morning moves slowly. In early hours there is time for contemplation, for listening, for the sorting of ones life into manageable tasks. In the morning I am not yet behind, not racing or juggling or fighting traffic and customer service or negotiating relationships. In the morning each thing is presented singularly, in its own time. Now coffee, now dishes, now the sound of the men collecting trash, now the blue jays knocking at the window. There is is time, and hope, and possibility inside the blue light of a morning, a gathering of will. 

There is comfort in a morning. As a child, I was always the first to rise. A good girl, I would quietly crawl from the covers to roam the house, feed the cat, and bring in my fathers paper. When he got up, half-lidded, sniffing for his coffee, interested in the news of the day, gearing up for a long day of work, he would take me by the hand and we would stand together at the picture window to watch the sunrise. From our perch on the hill, looking east, it was as if the whole world was bathed in soft pink sheets of promised light. My fathers hand was warm and soft.

This morning, I watched the sky take on the light from my own little perch on a hill, facing west. I closed my eyes, and felt my hand slip into my fathers. For a moment, my world was simple, love, gratitude, memory. And then, with a breath and a smile, I opened my eyes.

Start the day.