On Being a Morning Person

This is the best time of day. If you haven't been fighting insomnia all night, pre-dawn is the very best time of day: It's absolutely silent.

No lead-footed neighbor stomping on my ceiling.
No sound of traffic.
No children playing in the halls of my building.
No garbage trucks with their squeeling hydrolics and back-up-beeping.
No dogs barking.
No neighbors barking at their dogs to shut up in Spanish.

This is the one time of day when all of its opportunity, all its possibility is as-yet unspoiled. All those things that the day might yet be are still believable. I can hear myself think as I drink a cup of Sumatra black as the morning outside my window. It puts hair on my chest, that coffee. If you can't stand a spoon upright in the cup, it's not coffee in my book.

I can order my thoughts and put together exactly what I have planned for the day, and in the stillness, I can believe that it might actually go down like I plan.

No birds calling.
No people loudly sharing their half of whatever stupid conversation they're holding on their cell phone.
No interruptions.
No distractions.

When I was a kid, my parents made a deal with me: You can get up this early and turn on your light as long as you promise to play or read quietly and not disturb the rest of us. I was only too happy to comply. The thing about disturbing people in the morning, it cuts both ways. As a kid, I wanted to be left alone to play or read; now I just want to be alone with my thoughts. It's really the same thing, though. Then and now. I just want to be left alone with this wonderful, silent time when anything might yet be.

So the rest of you, just keep sleeping in.

Do me that one favor.