It all begins again...

“When morning gilds the skies,
My heart awaking cries:
May Jesus Christ be praised!”

- Original lyricist unknown

Sung lovingly to me throughout

her life by my mother

Fan Dreisinger

Mornings are my favorite time of the day.

They don’t start quickly, because it seems to take a bit of time for the several million cells in my body to get in sync and wake up.

I used to sit on the edge of the bed in a semi-stupor for five minutes or so, as if waiting for the preconcert tuning of a large orchestra completing the tonal check of each player’s instrument – you know, the confused sound somewhere between the scratching of fingernails on a blackboard and a band of cars honking their horns on a busy street – dissonant… irritating.

But then, the conductor raises the baton…a momentary calm follows and suddenly emerges the sound of music where the individual gives way to the coordinated impulse of single purpose…the many parts forgotten as focus and resolve become a singular, living thing.

For decades, that’s the way waking up worked for me…the discordance of transitioning from sleep to wake…and then, in the space of five to ten seconds, the whole thing seemed light up…as if a group of engineers, having checked all of the internal routines needed for conscious activity of the day, had given the “…all systems go…” green light.

It is hard to describe the sensation, but it was a physically pleasant feeling signaling it was time to get going, as Marcus Aurelius noted, to fulfill the tasks and duties of being a human being – meaning forward movement with the day and life.

In recent years, the methodology seems to have changed somewhat…taking a little longer – or maybe it is just a different routine reflecting a change in the way I am now living my life.

I suspect the internal engineers have sensed I no longer have a specific place to be every morning with clockwork timing…no clinic to open…no office requiring punctual presence…fewer papers that require ‘immediate attention’ to write. 

Maybe they sense my life is slowing down a little, or that the tasks still occupying my time allows for more discretion on my part.  Maybe they understand, that since my office is not more than a few feet from where I sip the nectar of the gods (i.e. sleep), it is not necessary to ‘tune the orchestra’ quite so quickly.

I suppose, having the discretion to choose what I want to do, and the places I want to be have created a calmer sense of the work necessitated by the ‘engine starters’ of my body.

So these days, I wake, not in complete stupor, but surely an early morning fog. I quietly trek to the kitchen turning on the coffee and turning off the house alarm. The iMac is next as it announces its functioning alertness with the ‘bong’ familiar to all who use this technology.  

Soon, a satisfying coffee…that only Molly seems to brew ‘just right’… is in hand and slipping into a comfortable chair, a book at the ready and Leah – who by now requires assistance – finding her way into my lap, I am ready to peek into the mind of a writer, who through the labor of his or her gift, provides me the momentum to ‘lift off’ the runway for yet another day full of expectation and the unknown.

In truth, I find waking up to be one of the loveliest things that occurs with regularity of my life.  Almost everything else I do still requires deliberate forward movement,  whether it be regular exercise…weekly writing…fulfilling obligations for events placed on to the ‘to do’ list or calendar…all of which are part of the process of life and require energy to continue to move forward on the journey.

BUT waking in the morning, ah yes, waking in the morning seems to be one of those automatic things over which I do not have input, nor control. Waking in the morning is a gift I find to be one of the great rewards of life…waking in the morning means there is another day into which I am privileged to meet an unknown future of conscious existence, and for me, it doesn’t get much better than that…

- ted