Morning Whispers My Name

 there is always something promising when the dawning streams through my bedroom windows, beckoning me to nice her her.

it is the bird chirping and when I reach over to grab my phone and notice the time

it is 4:58am

I remain nestled under the covers, looking out at the awakening unfolding in my backyard and ponder if I should slumber and rise

As has been my nature since I was a young woman, I eventually rise, attend to the morning refreshing, and begin my fifteen minutes of stretching, attending to the sleeping parts of my body, waking her for the day.

When I go downstairs, walking through my foyer to the dining room to the kitchen, I just listen.

It is so silent, quiet.

The entire house is asleep.

The noise of my coffee grinder doesn't stir the summer slumber, neither does the banging of pots for my morning nourishment of fruit and boiled egg, my citrus mint water waiting on my consumption, and all the while, the birds singing their hello song.

Long before most are awake in the beginning of this day, I've already done the tasks of living. I guess it started in earnest when I was raising my children and no longer on the corporate grind, I still rose early to attend to my household so that I could have the rest of the day to simply be.

I read and meditated, leisurely ate my breakfast with the sunroom to my side, watching grass grow and life emerge. 

Something whispered to me that this was my gift to me.

The grinding of this American culture is always that we are not productive if we are just sitting, if we are listening to the universe, if we are nourishing our bodies, if we are just existing. We must be producing, performing, or perfecting for the benefit of others.

But I stepped off that grind a long time ago and as I am about to send my last child to college in a few months, just refuse to embrace that that is the only way to be.

You miss things when you rush past them.

You miss the colors of the wild flowers that have white tops and wonder about their names.

Or the pass that is taller than the other grass and know that it has a purpose of being.

Or the ways the different birds speak to each other and sing a morning song, free in their wooded universe, unencumbered by human action.

There is a reason the morning is the best time, not to sleep it away, and not to jumble it up with what one should do or could do.

Being is enough.

I am entering a new phase of life and just want to wonder what it is like.

Simply living is the reason in itself.

Perhaps it is the creative, the poet, the writer, the artist who notices those subtle changes and the opportunity it brings.

Whatever it is, it is lovely.

I glance at my kitchen clock and hear the stirrings of the day, it is 8:27am, when they are waking up to begin. I quietly lament the wakening, having relished these hours alone, and then smile at myself.

Tomorrow, the dawn will whisper my name and beckon me to come.