Another completely open secret: I am one of the world’s chief exponents of that special breed known as Not A Morning Person. Everyone who knows me even a little is well aware that it’s my firm belief that I am thoroughly Anti-ante-meridian. And that if the world should happen to come perilously close to its end before noonish wherever I happen to be, I will not be prepared to put on my cape and tights, grab my magic wand and zip off to the rescue. So sorry, y’all.
Yippee Skippy for me, I married a man who, despite being unable himself to hibernate for the long periods I require on a constant basis, is sympathetic to my pathetic plight and leaves me untormented, bedding yanked up around my ears, in my mummified position of contentedly deep sleep when he arises.
Except for emergencies and Sundays.
On Sundays, one of the six days a week that he works long hours, if I sleep my Required Daily Allowance, I’d either better’ve gone to bed by about 8 pm on Saturday–not often convenient for those married to guys who conduct, and whose many colleagues and students conduct, concerts at, say, 8 pm on Saturdays and such–or if I sleep in Sunday morning the next time I’ll see him is, well, Monday. That’s how it works for a church choirmaster, at least one with a can’t-dash-home-between length of commute and Evensong on the docket.
The remaining Sunday option for me is to get over myself. So I haul my carcass off of the oh-so-magnetic mattress in the pre-dawn dark and crawl around until I can find my way to join him in the car for the trek SSE toward the Big City. And guess what: I found out there’s pretty stuff all over the sky at sunrise.
Sometimes it’s just the coloration of the dawn that’s so painterly. Marked at the horizon with the lace edging of silhouetted trees and hedges and power transformers, it stretches violet and rose and salmon and gold as far as the bleary eye can see. Almost always, there are thousands of birds taking to the skies en route to their own day jobs, the egrets flapping like clean sheets on the laundry line as they head out fishing and the grackles peppering the air as they look for actual clean laundry to besmirch, the pigeons heading for delicious night shift dinner garbage for their breakfast and the hawks remaining puffed up in their patrician dignity on lampposts while watching for the first ambulatory happy-meal to scurry by below. Even the traffic, being sparser and lit up with twinkly head- and taillights, looks far less plebeian and grubby.
I like the scenery next to me, too.
I can look around at all the glories of an awakening sky and be amazed and awed (yes, odd) and impressed and moved by this stuff I’d never see if I stayed abed. But really, I could get all that gushy admiration going by looking at a great sunset, right? Or if it has to be dawn, by ogling some nice Impressionist paintings or a super-duper set of postcards or some dandy cinematographer’s artwork on the big screen, and I’d never have to pry myself out of that come-hither blanket and pillow nest I so admire. Then I look at the scenery next to me again. I really like that scenery.
And it dawns on me. Seeing the sun rise may be all it’s cracked up to be, but so are NASCAR driving and alligator tagging and ice fishing, to those born to love those activities, and who am I to deprive them of their fill? No reason for me to compete for what I do not desire. I’m happy to report that I do, it turns out, appreciate a beautiful sunrise, but I have no particular need to reaffirm my appreciation except when it’s built into my limited opportunities to spend time with the man who, kinder chronographical conditions permitting, doesn’t harass me when I’m sleeping, even if the sun is getting a bit distant over the yardarm. Now, he is a sight for sorely sleepless eyes.
Art-Colored Glasses 
That Texan sunrise looks well worth getting out of bed for. I am not a morning person myself and I am also a lover of a full eight hours’ sleep.
Then perhaps I should post another lullaby or two sometime soon!
I’ve found that there are quite a lot of photographers on the web who post lots of gorgeous sunrise photos of much higher quality than I’m likely to capture, so other than my required mornings Up and At ‘Em, I will gladly leave it to them to show me the dawn’s glories!! 🙂
I HAVE to see the sunrise every morning .. and have to have had at least an hours writing under my belt before it.. how do you manage getting up so late! poor darling.. c
Maybe if you weren’t so outlandishly accomplished and productive some of us hibernatory creatures would be forced to take up the slack, but instead I am grateful for every second of sleep I’m allowed to take! 🙂
What is this “8 hours of sleep” you speak of? I exist on 4 to 5 hours (sometimes 3) of sleep per night, my own fault of course, and on the weekend when I might finally get to sleep in until the unheard of hour called 8:00 am, my husband opens the bedroom door and booms, “GOOD AFTERNOON!” I think I might need my special medication just thinking about it!
Hang on, I’ll send the Chocolate Patrol right over!!! You poor thing!
My mother, (wanting to do something to lift my spirits once), got me a Garfield cartoon poster for my vanity cabinet, in which he is looking rather cranky and mussed up and tussled and quite rumply, whilst he clutches a steaming cup of coffee, and the caption was, “I don’t do mornings”. Let’s just say I could have substituted for Garfield any day. About a year later our house was flooded, and that poster was one of the things I missed the most.
Not to say I don’t love a good sunrise. I once attended a sunrise Easter service at White Sands in New Mexico, and I’ll have to say, with the choir filling the air with praise, and the chill of the desert air, and then the sun rising over those pristine white sand dunes … well, I wouldn’t have seen that from my cozy spot under the covers. It was pretty spectacular.
I have two exceptions to my Not A Morning Person declaration … 1) in my younger years, I did so love to get up at the crack of dawn to go fishing, and 2) I always volunteered to do the early morning feedings when my grandbabies lived under my roof because I could have them ALL TO MYSELF. Definitely worth getting up for, dirty diapers and all.
Beautiful sunrise shot, and thanks for sharing with us. Please accept my apologies, but I just realized how stellar is the title to this blog post. A bit slow. Must be too early. 🙂
Ha! Then my not-so-subtle subterfuge is at work. (However flimsily.) 😉
You remind me of an Easter Sunrise experience of my own that was pretty grand in similar ways. Thanks for that! CBC-TV at least used to do a national Easter Sunrise choral concert broadcast, and one year it was a live broadcast from Edmonton (Alberta), where my husband was conductor of a professional choir–his and about 3 or 4 outstanding area amateur choirs were tapped for the broadcast and the whole thing was set in the glass pyramid of the Edmonton City Hall HQ atrium. Quite cool–the sunrise actually came at the end of the long concert, dawning through the top of the pyramid as the finales were being sung, because the broadcast was of course designed to coincide with the arrival of *Canada’s* sunrise (the east coast), being a national production. It *was* quite the experience, as you say. White Sands must have been simply amazing.
Glad you enjoyed the sunrise. I love mornings. Doesn’t mean I don’t have a long night now and then… But there is something very powerful about the morning.
I’ll grant the power of the dawn, indeed. Almost always need a serious nap if I actually *see* it, though.
Here in Spain we tend to go to bed late and get up late-ish so I know what you mean. On the odd occassion I do have to get up early and see the dawn, I find myself thinking “wow, this is pretty”…but I wouldn´t want to do it every day 😉
You *know* I am in sympathy with *that*! 😀
I like how you described the noises of the sunrise. It’s a surprisingly noisy time filled with bird chatter. Bon nuit!
*Les oiseaux* are having a high old time outside the window at this moment! Must have heard you mention them. 🙂
I was once like that…I even bought Pop-tarts for my brood so that Mom could stay in bed on Saturday mornings….But, the older I get, the more I enjoy the early hours.
Being married to a guy who gets up at 4 might have something to do with it, too…
That would definitely shape things! As I say, I know I’m peculiarly privileged to be in a household and a life that both allow for my frequent lyings-in. Lucky me!
Ah… the bright side of the dark side! 🙂
Maybe I’m a little less dangerous to the world simply by virtue of being awake less! 😉
I so loved your description of dawn in your neck of the woods! Kathryn! It’s a bit different than dawn here, with all our little song birds and the occasional rude crow. the sky, very like ours of course, but still lovely to hear you wax on about it. Sunrise is my daily companion, and it’s not at all uncommon for me to precede the sun. it’s a bit of a curse at times, but I’m one of those who can’t bear to miss a thing and I can never sleep past the first sounds of day. I’m a bit in awe of those who can! lovely post Kathryn, in every way.
Thank you, my dear. I really don’t imagine there are many places besides my own home where sleeping so long is permissible or even possible. What can I say, everyone has her gifts, and it happens that mine is Sleeping. Maybe I was bitten by a tse-tse fly in my youth or something. I like to think that I would get immense quantities of useful things done if I weren’t such a sleepaholic, but the truth is probably not so kind, so perhaps it’s best I sleep on and maintain the illusion, at least for myself. 😉
You, on the other hand, never cease to amaze me with your prolific and gorgeously polished work and the exquisite artistry with which you present it in words and pictures both. Thank you, Antoinette!
Oh Kathryn, you’d be positively other-worldly if you accomplished ANY more than you do! You deserve (and I’m sure need!) every wink of shut-eye you can get! And may your husband be blessed for protecting it!
Your playful title is a good one. If I’d first read that something had finally sunsetted on you I wouldn’t have known what to think.
Oh, that possibility has long since sunk below the horizon.
The early bird gets the worm but is that really worth it?
Certainly not for us worms!!!
Well, at least you can quickly describe yourself as ‘not a morning person’ or ‘night owl.’ I’m stuck with being a ‘mid-morning person.’
So beige!
Are you kidding? How many Mid-Morning Persons can there be in the entire world?? That strikes me as pretty exclusive company–I’d be thinking full-on fuchsia, if not carmine; certainly not beige!
I am not, nor will I ever be, a morning person. I may be awake, these days, in the early morning but nothing about my demeanor says, “Oh! What a beautiful morning!” In fact, those who rise from bed like toast from a toaster cannot be trusted, in my most humble opinion. And I think they’re the 1%. And they kick animals.
In their defense, they’re probably only *tripping* over the animals because they haven’t gotten enough sleep.
Sometimes I am awake before 9:30-ish, but it’s just best not to plan any interactions that call for a modicum of social grace until much later, just to be safe. I don’t kick animals, but I worry sometimes that I might forget myself and kick humans, and that just doesn’t go over well at all, I’m told. 😉
I have to get up at 5.30 on school days to get my daughter ready to drive to school so on weekends and holidays sleeping in is a true pleasure.That being said I do enjoy the sunrise and bird songs in the morning and the amazing gradients in the sky but as you said, I enjoy them when it is part of my shedule
So much is about what we do for love, isn’t it!
It’s not so much what you write about– always interestingly well done in perfect grammar. It’s the way you write, the words you use, the juxtaposition of thoughts, the personal and unique persona of you that wafts off the computer screen into my humble brain…
You are far too sweet, my dear friend, and I thank you!
Hi Kathryn! I’m on your team…not a morning person when I don’t have to be ( 4 days a week I am forced to open my eyes at 6am for the ‘day job’) I find it is best kept like some deep dark secret that I sleep late on weekends and holidays as so many think it’s obscene or something. I can never think why it matters to anyone who isn’t affected by what time I get up.
I don’t have a husband any more…and no children…except for my boy cats who have learned to GENTLY check on me to make sure I’m still breathing.
But I have to say I like early mornings very much…for all the reasons you so wittingly and poetically described…it’s just that draggy feeling mid-afternoon and the not getting to bed before 1 am that has me forgetting that I do…
Aye, there’s the rub! If I’m up at all early, then later in the day and evening I just run out of steam. I’m sorry your work makes you get up so early! Hope it’s *worth* getting up, at least! 🙂