Last Stars, First Birds

Venus was insanely bright in the East this morning at 5:38 when I reluctantly left the cool sheets of our bed and stiffly descended the steep stairs to find the bathroom and my daily dose of levothyroxine. Lucky for us, the bathroom window faces that sunrise direction, giving us plenty to look at while we’re…waiting to finish the first job of the day. I couldn’t stop looking at this bright and shiny last celestial gift of the night sky before a persistent sun bathed the field in yellow. Another star sat dimly just to the right and down a few steps, and was slowly swallowed in pale blue as I watched. On the other side of the window screen, a mockingbird offered the day’s audible opening act, beginning with a nailed-it impersonation of a blue jay and continuing through a repertoire that included finch, shrike, oriole, catbird and killdeer.

I hope I’m a morning person until my final breath and heartbeat.

Theres a tender and blurry place in those moments between the sky’s last call for constellations and the hoisting up of dawn’s first light. It feels wistful, having to let the night and all its wonder fade into the background as the day’s sounds and colors emerge. Suspended in this cosmic hammock of not getting quite the sleep I wanted and the upright tasks awaiting me downstairs, I delay being upright for as long as I practically can. Last night’s dinner dishes in the sink can wait as I hear a cardinal (the bird variety, not the cleric) sing its way to the empty shepherd hooks that will soon be dressed with suet and seed feeders (we take them down at night because our local raccoons have been known to scatter them about the ridge during their after-dark feeding frenzies). Joining the cardinals are catbirds, mourning doves, chipping sparrows, titmice and purple martins all noisily telling me breakfast is late and I’d better get a move on. Sigh. I have no alarm clock, and haven’t for years. It’s simply stopped being necessary when the hummingbirds started hovering at eye-level on the other side of the pane, giving us the tiniest of winged admonishments.

But I long for a way to stop time (I have a friend who is able to do this. I’m serious—it’s a gift given to him by some other Being, and I’ve sat in his presence while he has kindly and magically pushed the pause button) and move about unencumbered by the promise of productivity to just be in that middle place, that space of not yet. I strongly suspect there are quite a few of these spaces and opportunities in our lives and days, and lately, I find I’m looking for them rather hungrily. Philosophically, I suppose we could accurately claim that we’re in a constant state of Transition, accompanied by its twin, Transformation, and I welcome your comments if you’d like to noodle off in that direction. For me, the tasty marrow of life is in those in-between places, where we still have a view of what’s about to drift past us and get smaller behind our shoulders and can also see with emerging clarity what’s approaching, growing ever-bigger right in front of our eyes.

Someone far wiser than I’ll ever be told me at precisely the best teachable moment that “every choice is a loss, every choice is a gain”, and while it didn’t bring me immediate comfort as I faced down a dilemma of Great Discernment, having that phrase handy in my toolkit has soothed many a furrowed-brow situation, as I chose to embrace the gain and not mourn the loss any longer than was necessary. I’m sure we’d go mad if every option was clear and visible to us during our waking hours. I’m glad for the simple choices of eggs or yogurt for breakfast and a rumbling stomach urging me to pick one and get on with it. Today it’s yogurt (with strawberries winning out over peaches or blueberries). Maybe tomorrow I’ll put eggs on the plate. If the sun comes up again, I’ll do my best to be mindful of that gift first. Time spent mindfully in the “in-between” helps me make better choices, especially when the options weigh considerably more than eggs or yogurt.

So what’s it going to be today, now that the sun has arced its way to mid-point in the sky? The wrens are chattering happily, full of millet and sunflower seeds, and the stars above do whatever stars do as they wait behind the blue and yellow curtain for tonight’s encore against a velvety black backdrop. I think I’ll keep swinging in that cosmic hammock fastened to bright Venus at one end and the unstoppable joy of a mockingbird at the other.

For once, this choice is all gain.