Don’t Use Your Words, At Least, Not Just Yet

It’s Gratituesday! Silence. Yes, silence. That’s my grateful thought today.

From what I can tell, not a lot of people are out and about at the real beginning of the day. Not too many get to see such sights as this, live and in person.

Ya gotta get out of bed pretty dang early to see this kind of thing.

I don’t mind either.

I love, love, love my morning quiet. My ME time. I love not having to engage my vocal cords until I’ve been awake a few hours.

This isn’t a recent development either. I recall as a teen, back in the dark ages just after the dinosaurs died off, snarking at my Mom for having the audacity to speak to me before I’d been awake a full hour. I just wanted quiet. I wanted nothing more than silence and a non-requirement for speech, until I felt fully awake, all gears turning, internal meters running.

Thing is, with so many siblings, three sisters, three brothers, plus the requisite two parental units, I didn’t get much quiet time. Ever. Especially not in the morning. My parents apparently rose before the sun, went to bed sometime after midnight. In fact, I wonder if they ever slept.

And I shared a bedroom.

My entire life, I have shared a bedroom with someone. At home, sisters. At college, dorm mates and room mates. Then married, a husband.

I kinda want to know what it’s like to have my own room.

Luckily MSH seems allergic to mornings, so, now that the fledglings have flown, I have mornings to myself. Long, quiet, uninterrupted stretches of silence, solitude, and general perfection.

I hate to waste a second of it on the mundane tasks of the day, like sleeping in,  or eating, or chores or errands.

Why do such ordinary things when I can think uninterrupted, or write, or walk, or bike, or simply sit and observe the day unfolding.

Yes, early rising required for a live viewing of such sights.

I revel in my mornings, the sun just peeking out, tentative and sometimes even colorful. I love the different sort of silence of bird chatter. I love that traffic hasn’t reached a fever pitch and I can still hear the leaves rustling when a slight breeze ruffles through. I love the melodic and distant sounding wind chimes adding their bits to the silence.

The light inside the house so early in the day, a soft, reflected, easy on the eyes glow prods the senses awake gently, slowly. Don’t we all deserve such tenderness at the beginning of a day?

Days that start with long silences and soft light, that require no spoken words for a while, always result in more calm throughout, regardless of what’s thrown at me once the talking starts.

Am I spoiled? Heck no. I earned this quiet, this time of me-ness. And I’ll defend it to the death. Although, from what I’ve seen, few want to claim these hours as their own. So I anticipate no battles.

I know there are households with young tots where such luxuries reside only in dreams. Where sleep is what one does with the beginning and ending edges of the night. I know insistent hungry voices clamber on to beds and snuggle under warm blankets and push and shove and disturb peace at all hours.

And such knowledge makes me all the more grateful for my early uninterrupted hours.

If I’d known such mercies existed, I’d have looked to the future with more hope than I did. Ah, sweet mornings. How I love thee.

The rest of you, please, just keep sleeping in so I can have my silence and my alone time.

Sweet, yes?

“Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.” ~ Francis Bacon