Peace on the Porch

I am not a morning person by natural inclination. But as someone who deals with insomnia on a regular basis, I have learned the benefits of early morning rising. This summer my family moved into a new house which features a glorious wraparound porch facing east toward a driveway island planted with a pyramid of trees: a tall, graceful red cedar at the center, with various smaller pine trees, flowering dogwoods, hydrangeas, and other bushes sloping down towards either side. The land slopes downhill, away from the house, with a large park and pond just past it, which means I have a beautifully uninterrupted, silhouetted view of the sunrise through the trees on the island. Over the past few months of living here, I have discovered the joys of getting up early to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee, watching the sun rise.

When I first developed the habit, the sun was already fairly bright by 6am, and the birds were busy at the feeder by the time I brought my coffee out to join them. It was often quite warm even at that hour, and I padded out to the porch in bare feet and my nightclothes. But as the months have slipped by, my 6am rising has brought me out to a nearly-completely dark world, tinged with frostiness, and I toss on socks and a jacket before braving the dark. 

This morning, I felt my way over to a porch chair by the subtle glow of a crescent moon peering hazily through the clouds over the island. The world around was nearly silent, with only a distant, background hum from the highway far across the pond. A large, brief crashing sound from the woods nearby broke the silence: was that a neighbor, or a deer? In the darkness, I had no way of knowing. 

Half an hour and a full cup of coffee later, the skies have lightened and a bright rosy glow at the horizon shows me exactly where "east" is. The birds are still silent, except for the forlorn peep of some kind of shore bird whose call I don't recognize. A single car has driven past. No people, no dogs, no voices. Just peaceful quiet, as I watch the world coming into focus with the almost imperceptibly-brightening sky.

I listen for other sounds of the world coming to life. I hear the birds before I see them; a quiet shuffling in the branches, the click-click of tiny claws landing gracefully on the feeder or the shuffling of small feet in the mulch, a slight whoosh of wings as they dart back to their homes. As the sky continues to lighten, I see the occasional silhouette of a bird darting across the sky. 

The sounds grow more slowly than the light. The rumbling drone of a truck, the blue jays scolding each other awake, the pad-pad of a jogger's measured strides, the voice of a few birds quickly joined by many, my children's footsteps inside the house.

The world awakens slowly, and so do I. By the time the light and the sounds have reached their peak, I am ready to face them. Reluctantly, I leave the peace of the porch and go inside to face the day ahead with a smile on my face. 

Life is good. Even when it's hard, it's good. Even when my mind is tossing with worries and plans and life, I know I can find peace on the porch. 

The Tale of a Reluctant Morning Person

I am writing this at 5:45am, having been up for an hour already. Technically, I've been awake for closer to two hours, but I only actually got out of bed an hour ago, when I heard the pitter-patter of little feet heading downstairs. My 4-year-old daughter is definitely a morning person. She routinely wakes up (and gets up) before the sun, happily chirping "Good morning!" to anyone and anything she sees as she skips through the house. She goes from sound asleep to wide awake and cheerful in about 2.5 seconds.

I, on the other hand, need closer to 2.5 hours. I am, one could say, a slow starter. I prefer to ease my way into the day, beginning by lying in my bed contemplating my own existence and thinking about the day ahead. Eventually I get around to sitting up and grabbing my Kindle, reading or playing games for a bit while I mentally prepare myself for human interaction. (Some would call this antisocial behavior; I call it a homicide prevention technique.) Finally, I'm ready to face - well, not the day, exactly, but at least the coffee maker. Once I've managed to bumble my way into the kitchen and through the coffeemaking process, THEN I'm ready to talk to people without fantasizing about their slow, painful deaths.

But every once in a while, when I am forced by circumstances out of my control (to wit: my 4-year-old) to be out of bed and moving around before sunrise, I try to make the most of it. Since neither of the other residents of my house are particularly morning people, either, I generally don't need to interact with anyone. (The 4-year-old doesn't count; she'll cheerfully hold a conversation with herself for hours, no need for me to talk to her.) Which means that I can sit quietly with my mug of coffee and simply contemplate the world around me.

This morning, I took the opportunity to watch the first glimmer of sunrise in the eastern sky.

The inky blackness of the sky above was pierced by two bright stars (planets? I'm not awake enough yet to consult a star chart, but the foggy recesses of my brain remind me that Venus is the morning star, so probably that, yeah), and the glow of the sun just past the horizon was beginning to highlight silhouettes of trees and houses.

As I continued to watch, the blue along the horizon began to spread higher adding the tiniest hints of pink and gold, dimming the glow of the bright stars and changing the blackness around me into the half-familiar shapes of my porch railing and the neighbor's fence.

That glimpse of pink and gold spurred me on to stay awake and watch for the rarely-seen (for me, anyway) glory of an autumn sunrise. I called my daughter outside to watch it with me, but after a few "Ooohs!" and "Aaaaahs!" she lost interest and pulled out of my arms to go back in the warm house and play with her dolls. I clutched my still-warm coffee mug instead, appreciating the contrast between my bare feet on the cold flagstones and my hands on the warm mug.

As I waited patiently (well, kind of patiently) for the sky to brighten, I became aware of the unusual quietness of the neighborhood, broken only by the whoosh of the occasional passing car. No chattering voices, no angry car horns, not even a barking dog or a bird calling to its mate. Not even the morning insect sounds of late summer.

I was able to let go of my own thoughts that had been frantically planning out the day ahead, and just enjoy the peace and serenity of being alone, with God's beautiful sky above me, His silent earth around me. Even as the world was waking and coming to life around me, ready to begin a new day, my soul was waking and coming to life.

I am ready for the new day!

But I think I'll have another cup of coffee first, just in case.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

I’m not a morning person, so it’s not often that I’m up at the crack of dawn by choice. But between my regular bouts of insomnia and having a young daughter who gets up at 5:30 or 6am every day, once in a while I choose to get up with the sun and enjoy the peace and quiet of the early morning before the demands of my daily schedule kick in.

When I’m up this early, I see things I don’t usually see, like the pink of the sunrise peeping over the horizon outside my kitchen window. Like the neighborhood bunny hopping languidly through the grass, enjoying his breakfast. Like the mourning doves strutting across the porch, gently hooting to each other. 

With the menfolk still asleep upstairs, I get to spend some uninterrupted time with my daughter, reading books together, chatting, or even just sleepily snuggling, with no other demands for my attention. I am reminded of how quickly she is growing up, and of how much she changes from month to month, week to week, and even day to day. These quiet mornings give me a chance to enjoy her exactly as she is in this particular moment, to focus completely on her without distractions. I am fascinated and amazed by this beautiful child that I helped create. I am reminded of what a blessing she is.

As much as I love words, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, so instead of writing any more about the joys of early morning, I’ll share some images of those joys. 

 

Good morning!

 

Lent Photo a Day: Still

As the mother of two small children, one of whom is an early riser (which, since they share a room, means that the other is – albeit involuntarily - also an early riser), it is somewhat rare that I ever have a morning that could be considered “still.” I usually hit the ground running, sometimes more literally than others, depending on whether the sounds coming from the bedroom down the hall are merely the usual sibling squabbles or whether there are clunks and thuds indicative of dangerous furniture climbing or heavy projectile throwing. But every now and then, my husband and I manage to exhaust them both enough that they sleep later than we do, and we have a morning – or at least, part of a morning – which is, in fact, still. This morning was one of those mornings.

It was an interesting morning to be still, since it’s quietly snowing, adding yet another layer of stillness to the stillness inside our house. And since it’s the first full day of spring, the stillness also includes a bit of a lull in the birdsong that has been growing in both volume and variety over the past few weeks. The snow creates its own stillness over the usual morning noises of neighbors getting up and heading out for the day, or traffic passing on the nearby road, of the routine noises of everyday life as it goes on all around us.

Even after the kids woke up and we began our morning, there was a wonderful subdued stillness around us. I often spend breakfast reminding the kids to sit back down and eat, answering their endless questions about whatever pops into their heads, catching up on urgent emails, and planning out the business of my day. But today, the kids were content to sit quietly and eat their breakfasts (and in one case, half of my breakfast as well), and I gave myself permission to delay the day’s work and sit at the kitchen table, watching the birds and enjoying the stillness.

Our usual avian visitors include large flocks of house sparrows, a pair of mourning doves, a trio of blue jays, a pair of cardinals, and a handful of junkos. The sparrows, jays, and cardinals are all quite shy and nervous, but the cheery junkos and gentle doves allow me to approach them very closely. They have a stillness of their own. The junkos and sparrows often eat at the same time, and when a movement inside the house startles the sparrows to flee in a frantic whoosh of wingbeats, the junkos merely glance around, often looking right at me and cocking their heads as if to say, “Do YOU know what their problem is?” There is a calmness and a stillness to their behavior that makes me feel calm and still as well. They are fearless and trusting, not assuming that any movement means danger, not wasting energy on fleeing unnecessarily.

I could learn a lesson from their stillness: Don’t borrow trouble. Don’t assume the worst. Deal with problems as they come but don’t waste energy on something that isn’t actually a problem. Look around and question the behavior of others before you consider imitating it. Enjoy what’s in front of you. Be still

Still. 

June 8 Photo: Six O'Clock

I am not a morning person. I have never been a morning person. I doubt that I will ever be a morning person. But I am the mother of small children, which means that I am up in the early morning a lot more often than I would like to be. And most of the time, it’s all I can do to drag myself out of bed, pry my eyelids open, and do whatever needs doing. But every once in a while, there’s some kind of reward for being awake at six o’clock in the morning.

Sometimes that reward comes in the form of a beautiful sunrise. Sometimes it’s especially beautiful birdsong, or a glimpse of a bright goldfinch or a scarlet cardinal having his breakfast at my birdfeeder. Once or twice it's even been a wild turkey in my driveway. And sometimes, it’s just the muffled quiet of early morning fog covering the world with a blanket of calm.

Sadly, this photo can’t do it justice, but the view out of my back window at six o’clock this morning was a masterpiece of color and depth. The bright green of my hedge faded into a more muted green of the trees behind, and then an even more muted green and grey of the houses and trees further in the distance, until all the color dissolved into the pure grey of the foggy sky. It made me wish I were a painter, able to capture every subtle gradation of color.

I don’t enjoy being awake at six o’clock in the morning, but if I have to be, at least I have moments like this to make it worthwhile.