(Written November 2024)

By Lauren Aldridge

Dawn rises over the hunched shoulders of buildings and creates a dark outline over the shadowed branches of the neighborhood trees extending toward the sky. Candlelight flickers and dances with the promise of another day- but not quite yet. There is pure silence, save for the occasional car passing underneath my balcony. It is 5:20 am. Some would consider this an ungodly hour to be awake. But I always look forward to early mornings. I feel eager to exist in this space. The in-between, where time passes between realms. From the ethereal dreaming space to the crisp lens of reality.

Mornings have always seemed to possess a mysterious magic to me. There are rounded edges to this time of day, a return to what once came so naturally to us as ancient humans- stillness and quiet. Now it feels we must wrestle our right to be still from the clutches of our iPhones, endless emails and jam-packed calendars.

It feels special to carve out a space for stillness amidst the barrage of information and sensory input we all experience daily. Where much of the world is still lost to dreams and warm sheets, I conduct my ritual of grinding coffee beans and wiping sleep from my eyes. I sit with myself in this silence. The tug to distract myself, to put on music, look at my phone, is a muscle I try and gently retrain. Some days it is harder than others.

The quiet is not to be feared, it is a companion- if we allow it to be.

Sometimes if we are lucky, ideas will choose to reveal themselves us when we create space for them- this essay was one such product of a still morning.

Summer mornings of saturated sugary-sweet color and heat, crispy fall mornings that tingle your toes and make you sleepy, mornings that feel like they vanish in the blink of an eye- how is it noon already? Foggy, drifting mornings that feel listless as if on the open sea. I love them all.

I savor this delicious moment of belonging to myself- a rare privilege.

There is a humble quality to a morning spent in the quiet. A still morning is unassuming in its meager offering to you. There are no bells and whistles, no shiny gimmicks.

Don’t let it slip through your fingers without a moment of appreciation, breathing in that velvety rising sun. Deep violet Cala-Lilies in a vase and freshly brewed coffee. The hair-raising comfort of my heater kicking on after a long hot summer, to comfort me on this cool November morning. Cozy yawns and warm, baggy sweatpants.

This is worth getting out of bed for.