Celebrate Mornings

I am falling in love with slow mornings. I have always been a get-up-and-go, fill the days until they are bursting at the seams kind of person. My alarm goes off early, and I can be out the door until long after sundown within twenty minutes. Sunday mornings used to be a subtle torture to me. People want to sleep, and sit, and brunch until the sun is low in the sky and there is no chance of anything but a mostly wasted day. No creamy-lemon Benedict, no powdered Belgian waffles have ever felt worth the entire afternoon.

Lately, time has been a battle for me. Time for friends, time enough to finish the to-do list (which never seems to shorten), time to do the things I love (like writing this blog). Days fly by without a second to pause. I remember a friend telling me about her husband’s morning routine; he wakes up, meditates for ten minutes, journals for ten minutes, and takes a cold shower. Like clockwork, he sets up his day with militant self-care. With much less consistency and regularity, I have been trying to carve out a little bit of time at the start of the day, before the whirring of the world turns up and the day begins to speed into a blur.

In the city, mornings are sometimes the only breath of quiet one can get. The world doesn’t fall asleep as the stars come out the way it does in the woods. It runs itself into exhaustion until sometime around 2am when it finally collapses on the sidewalk. But late fall early dawn is always quiet. The streets feel reserved, as if they are still working up the will to uncurl from the warmth of heavy blankets. It’s one of the few time you can feel truly alone in the city — not lonely, which can creep up in the strangest places; on a crowded train full of strangers glued to phone screens or surrounded by the festive tinkle of an acquaintance's party — but truly alone in that beautiful way that makes you feel both itty bitty and bigger than you could ever dream. There is something about a sunrise that creates a sense of awe on a person, at least as much as freezing city streets scattered with nips of fireball and humming with the sound of passing trains can.

I savor the cold kitchen floor on my bare feet and the warmth of the stove while I fry an egg. A warm breakfast is a small luxury so many of us have forgotten in our grab for a smoothie or protein bar on the way out the door. My first real thoughts of the day are about what I want to feed myself from the crowded contents of my fridge. I wander through the kitchen unhurried, unworried about anything too big to fit on the counter. When I sit down to eat breakfast, it may be the only time that day that I get to focus on one thing alone. I clear my mind as I fill my belly, and then I sit down to fill a blank page in my notebook.

I cuddle on the couch with a steaming mug of tea and a sleepy dog, still sighing off the chill of pre-dawn from our morning walk. My whole body seems to curl towards the mug in my hands, drawn to the warmth of the clay. I turn inwards, listening to the streets outside wake up from the safety of my little world. It’s a slow introduction to the day, dipping in one foot at a time, rather than diving in all at once. It means I float through the unknown waters ahead, rather than swimming against the current from the moment I get in.