Daybreak. Coffee. The Big Two.

I’m happy to have Slim Randles here again as today’s Wednesday’s Guest. I thought this was a nice piece that invites us to stop and appreciate our days, especially those early morning hours when the world is waking up. I do love those daybreak times when I go outside and the sun is rising over the treeline in the meadow across the road. This is a picture I took a couple of weeks ago when I could actually see a sunrise before the clouds took over the sky 24/7. Now and then I look at it to remind myself the sun does exist.

If you’d like, you can have a donut to go with your coffee and then enjoy Slim’s story. And when you finish here, hop over to The Blood–Red Pencil, where Slim has another guest post.

There’s something so satisfying about getting out of bed when the world is still dark and quiet and resting. Making the coffee gives us time to scratch and think. Well, scratch, anyway. Most of that thinking will start after about the third cup.

But it’s a quiet time. A private time. When the world is dark, and there isn’t yet a hint of pink over the eastern mountains, it’s very good. We can relax. No one is expecting anything from us right now. Our guilt can take some time off, and we can listen to music or work a crossword puzzle or turn on the TV and watch the weather guy discuss millibars and troughs.

Soon enough, we’ll have to be out there living for others: our bosses, our customers, our animals, our fields. But right now no one needs us except the dog, and she does well on kibbles and an occasional drive-by ear rumple.

We can look out the window at the eastern glow and wonder what will happen in the hours until our world turns dark again. People will be born and people will die. People will win honors and people will go to jail. People will create things today that live past them and people will disappear forever. People will write about these things and other people will read about these things.

And then the world will go dark and dormant on us again and we’ll think about what happened in our tiny portion of this huge moving amalgam and hopefully we’ll sleep easily tonight. Then, when we arise tomorrow and head for the coffee pot, we can think about what happened today, and how it has made us slightly different for taking on the next tomorrow.

Come to us, daylight. Bring us the new day. But do it gently, please, and slowly enough for one more cup.
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Slim Randles writes a nationally syndicated column, Home Country, and is the author of a number of books including  Saddle Up: A Cowboy Guide to Writing. That title, and others, are published by  LPD Press.