Quiet

photo credit www.thebeaconsglare.wordpress.com

After slapping the snooze button on the alarm clock for the fourth time this morning, I rolled out of bed, padded to the bathroom, took care of business, and started toward the kitchen/family room when I realized something....the kids weren't up.

It was almost 6:15 by this point and that is unusual in our house. My son is a morning person. My daughter isn't really a morning person, but is the kind of person who doesn't like to feel like she's missing anything, so she'll get up just to make sure.

I usually stay up late because I love the feeling of having the house all to myself while the people I love most in the universe are peacefully, soundly sleeping nearby. To have that in the morning was an unexpected and extremely delightful treat.

I stumbled into the living room and curled up on the couch, listening to the world around us wake up. Well, that and the steady, droning hum of the fans we have running to pull in the cooler air from outside. It was still dark outside and the birds were just starting to make noise.

No one was bickering about how long someone else had been in the bathroom. No one was frantically running around looking for their favorite pencil that they had forgotten they had already put in their book bag the night before. No one was yelling in frustration because wearing a long-sleeved, black sparkly shirt with last year's outgrown, too tight, hot pink biker shorts was vetoed. No one was begging for extra dessert in their lunches, or complaining that brushing their teeth in the morning was pointless because they hadn't eaten anything overnight while sleeping.

photo credit www.highcountryimages.com

I was thinking just how nice that was, when it hit me that without all those things, I wouldn't know to appreciate this cool, quiet morning. I wouldn't be able to sit on the couch with a cup of steaming chai tea watching the first rays of the sun fight through the mist and fog over the mountain top I see from my living room window.

I wouldn't know.

What's worse? I wouldn't even know that I didn't know.

Small blessings. Big blessings. I guess it really is all what you notice and what you make of it.