On Tuesday morning, November 5th, my alarm clock sounded its shrill cry at 6:31 a.m. It took about ten groggy seconds to realize that it was a “late start” day at school and I had forgotten to turn off my alarm. I found, however, after twenty minutes of tossing and turning and rearranging my pillow every which way, that I was unable to return to sleep’s lull. The sun had just begun its steady climb over the horizon, and soft threads of light filtered through my bedroom windows. It seemed that, against my will, day was calling me—so, begrudgingly, I surrendered.
At first I just lay there, listening to the hushed patter of my mother’s footsteps as she danced about the house in preparation: making breakfast of sweet smelling things, lifting blinds and clearing doorways of haphazard coats and shoes that had accumulated the day before. She has always been an early riser. I remember a younger self equating her with a morning fairy: there was something mystical in being so well acquainted with light as to accompany it alone.
That same younger self, I realized, was, too, in love with mornings—but in a quieter, more contained way. I would wake with the sun, and rather than tumble into the momentum of the coming day, would remain in a warm nest of pillows and blankets and give host to my thoughts. About yesterday, the walk I had taken beneath fiery fall leaves or the movie I had watched with my father; about the book I was reading; about last night’s dreams; or about my lasting ones, of becoming a mother or a painter or a queen of a distant land. In these early hours, fresh from the renewal of sleep and faced with the day’s possibility, I experienced the joy of absolute clarity. When my mother peeped in to see whether I was awake, I would shut my eyes and let my jaw go slack, desperate to hold onto this conscious, encompassing peace.
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Growing up, of course, gets in the way. It introduces late night television, piles of homework, and a shift in circadian rhythm. Somehow, what used to be sacred hours has become the enemy, voiced by the malicious alarm clock and fought with the blank brace of sleep.
Illustrator and poet Maira Kalman wrote of the “optimism of the morning,” in which “it is wise to get going, to be confident, expansive, exuberant.” This optimism is what I rediscovered this Tuesday as I left my thoughts to their own whim, as I sang show tunes in the shower, as I walked with my brother down to the lake and we leaned back on a sunken bench to gaze at the open sky. If we can remember Kalman’s optimism, even for one day, we are choosing between the conscious and the unconscious; it will no longer be a question of what dreams will come as the sun rises forlornly behind our curtains, but rather, in our action and “exuberance,” of which will come true.
