December Morning Breakfast, With a Side of Pinecones

I’ve started getting up a little earlier in the mornings. And it takes a beast of an effort. I start by smacking the alarm clock repeatedly and muttering a string of border-line bad words. Not the super bad ones, just the kind that used to make mom threaten the bar of soap, but not actually give it. Like ‘crap’ and ‘son of ughhh…” In actuality I only ever ‘got the soap’ once. I was in the first grade and thought that Harve Presnell’s use of the D word in The Unsinkable Molly Brown was quite masterful. So I tried it out on the play ground, a little boy named Matthew Green told on me and it was all downhill from there, straight toward my mom’s unused bar of white Dove soap. But I digress.

After the third alarm clock slap, I regain consciousness and hurl myself into the purple dawn, shivering and searching for the house shoes on the cold wood floors. But once I’m up, safely in my sweat shirt and starting a big pot of coffee, I’m ok. And then the early morning, the cold house, the dim light streaming through the windows of our gray and white kitchen becomes downright cheerful.

I’m a morning person. It’s not that I enjoy getting up; I just enjoy myself once I’m at the breakfast table. Everyone else is still asleep, the neighborhood is quiet, and it’s just me and my thoughts. No rushing, no yelling or searching for keys or struggling down the driveway with a trash can as the garbage truck pulls away. No speeding or tossing the entire contents of the sock drawer onto the ground because I have approximately 38 seconds before I need to leave the house. I hate all that. And so I get up early. I suppose that makes me a morning person.

I need a buffer. I need to watch the sun come up on these cold December mornings, breathe the first smells of coffee, enjoy a stack of magazines, say a prayer of thanks, have a quiet conversation with God. It’s when I take a deep breath and enjoy my home before heading into a frantic work day. So this morning I took my time. I threw a bunch of pine cones into one of my favorite bowls and decided against my original plans of painting/glitterfying them for Christmas. I like their natural brown colors, they seems easier, a little less fluffy. I flipped through a Cath Kidston book for some office inspiration and ate my toast, wishing I could stay there all day.

But if I could stay at that table all day… it wouldn’t be the same. If I had hours and hours stretching out in front of me, perhaps these morning buffers wouldn’t be quite as special, quite as important. So instead of wishing for more, I’ll be grateful for the dawn’s peacefulness, grateful for raspberry jam toast, with a side of pine cones.