I stir in my bed, rustling the warm air trapped under my fleece blanket, suddenly feeling the chill in the other part of bed where I hadn’t slept. I hear it again – a tinkling little laugh, a babble. My eyelids flutter, straining to fight against the weight of sleep. It is dark but the room is lit by a dull streetlamp, so it takes me a minute to adjust to the light. There it is – a sudden burst of laughter. As consciousness flows in slowly like a sea of molasses, I realize that Gracie is awake.
Although it looks like an ungodly hour, thanks to Daylight Savings Time, it is actually 5:45am – the time when her day naturally begins. My day is forced to begin and yet, my heart leaps and my fingers can’t wait to hold her little, excited body in my arms. Aaron wakes up, gets her bottle, and brings her in from her crib, where she has been running from one side to the other side, wondering why it takes us so long to fetch her.
She claps her little hands, and literally leaps into bed with me, reaches out her arms for her bottle and cuddles up with me on my pillow, as she drinks her milk and runs her fingers through my hair, and pulls me close to her for a tight hug. After our usual morning routine where Gracie is bouncing off the bed fully awake, and her parents are dragging their faces from their pillows, we go downstairs and pull up the blinds on the windows. The sun is starting its ascent and its rays are filtering through the trees in thicker rays ever since they began losing their leaves.
I open the door to watch the sun rise and a few minutes later, this beautiful haze appeared in the sky, wrapping the trees in a smoky, surreal covering.
I had to capture this beauty and offer a silent prayer of gratitude for this beautiful earth.
