. . . Cabin & Cottage : January 2011

I've only been friends with "morning" in recent years. First there was my teens. Not much later was morning sickness. After that my morning or midnight alarm would have been a crying baby. That segued into mornings of finding socks and shoes and making school lunches and driving before I was really safely enough awake. On top of more morning sickness. I suppose I have a sensitive metabolism. Whenever I get up feeling "off", I still refer to it as "just my morning sickness."

When my youngest was five I went back to school. And then there was a job. More crazy mornings. But the summer I chose a language class at 7:00 am! and felt just fine and could also conjugate verbs, I realized that me and morning had come to terms.

But mornings are different now. Mostly because there is nothing "alarming" about them.

I'm often alone first thing in the morning for an hour or so. And like having language lessons at 7 am, my brain likes to wake up thinking. Not talking. It wants to look at pretty pictures, get new ideas, and take in the details cast by morning light.

This was my inspiration today, from Victoria Classics, Rooms of Bliss. It's such a beautiful space in peaceful white. And while it inspires me to beauty, it also grounds me and tells me that no matter what I choose to arrange on my table, I will never ever own a room like this one.

You mustn't take that to mean that I am unhappy about that. It just is what it is. I live where I live. I'm not in the building phase of life anymore.

So you see, morning is also the philosophical part of the day for me. I have the most creative ideas while I'm fixing my face, brushing my teeth, and messing with hair. I've learned to keep a calendar, paper, and pencil near my mascara.

I seem to know more in the morning. It's a good time for planning. For recommitting.

For a fresh month. The year ahead. Or years ahead.

The evening of our days is much like our morning. When we are young we know truth before we have experience enough to unlearn it. And when we grow old we know truth after it is too late to really do much about it. But like evening and morning light, these can be the times of the most clarity, of seeing the details most clearly.

At this end of January, beginning of February, I am reminded of how many framed pictures I own of twilight. Scenes where you can't tell if it is morning or evening. I guess I'm attracted to the mystery held in transitions. Is it the beginning of something or the end?

Morning is the time for contemplating such things. The time that my brain chirps to itself like birds do in the trees. It'll quiet down later just like the birds do. But I could still never say of myself that I am an early bird. Just a contented old bird.