Mornings

I have always been a morning person. When I was really young, my grandpa came to stay with us for awhile, and he was a morning guy too. I remember coming down the hall, wrapped up in a blanket to watch Andy Griffith, my only choice back in the day. My grandpa was sitting outside saying his morning prayers and the sun was barely peeking above the garden fence. I went outside that morning and sat near him on the low rock wall that lined a path through the lawn and listened to the birds and watched the sky change. It felt powerful. Like all the possibilities for anything were right there.

I think back to the happiest, most creative times of my life and the one theme in common is the early morning, languid starts to the day. I would get up in the dark and listen to the night noises of crickets and spend some time writing or painting and gathering my thoughts for the day.

Lately, I have been using my mornings to work on a memoir. I used to think memoirs were written by aging rock stars who had one good song. But that’s just me hiding behind a joke. All the signs in my life point to–WRITE. So even if no one ever reads it, I am working on my journey through darkness and finding the way to the other side. Sometimes it’s hard to get the words on the page, not because they aren’t there, but because they are there too much. Allowing them to spill forth takes a lot of strength.

I just finished teaching a literature unit about memoir in my curriculum. It was from Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. She is a writer and wrote a memoir about her childhood in Brooklyn and South Carolina. She writes about her grandfather and her memories of spending time with him and a lot of other kid memories of family and games and the early love of words and stories. She writes in verse, but it isn’t rhyming and cutesy. It’s lyrical and powerful, even haunting. I don’t know if my students loved it, but I did. It was familiar and inspired me to keep working on my own words on the page.

I went to Antonito a few weekends ago. My aunt and uncle were parade marshals at the Labor Day parade. I stood on the corner with my cousins to wave like crazy when Uncle Bobby and Aunt Orlinda drove by. Then I spent the afternoon hanging with my family. We sat in chairs in the front lawn and talked of old times. I have so many memories of growing up in that front yard next to the train tracks. I asked my cousins if they’d ever move back. They said no. I never lived in Antonito. But I would. I would buy one of those old buildings on Main Street and paint the story of the Taylor’s on the brick wall across from my Grandpa’s old shoe shop and I would get up early and write until the sky got its color.

Maybe that day is coming. Right now though, I am just enjoying this time of reflection and peace. I am soaking in the morning light and trying to listen to what the universe is giving me now.