Morning

I like the sounds of early morning.  In warm weather, the quiet of the night is replaced with the sounds of chirping birds but by 6 am, as the sun completes its rise, the birds have settled into their routines and I can listen to the stillness and plan my day.  On workdays, I'm usually up by 5:30 am.  I like it this way. 

Though I use an alarm for backup, most days I come awake on my own.  Typically, those slow moments when I am first awake are refreshing.  I'm alive and awake and the day is ahead of me.  For me, the sign I am ready for a break comes in those early mornings when the first minutes I am awake are filled with a slowness.  I know that I must get up to face the day, but I'd rather burrow back under the covers for more rest.  On those days, it's the sound of my  coffee pot gurgling to life that gets me up.  If it weren't for that auto-brew setting, I'd likely be late to work for the whole of the month of May.

Summer vacation allows the mornings to stretch out.  I come awake with reading, gardening, and cooking on my mind.  I walk downstairs in the stillness, pour myself some coffee and sit down to write for a few minutes.  JT is still fast asleep but Tiger and Lucy join me in the windowsills, sunning themselves and sniffing the great outdoors.  The familiar sounds of NPR narrate these leisurely mornings, the day stretches before me, and all seems right in my world.

Golly, summer vacation, what took you so long?