On the Dawn's Early Light

     Now that I have become a caregiver, I have learned about a land I only occasionally explored when I needed to and only from time to time. This is a land inhabited by denizens of the dawn, the people who daily and regularly start moving in the wee hours of the morning. New mothers know something about this when the newborn squalls early on, but they forget as soon as possible once the infant begins to sleep in. However, consistent early risers train themselves to operate before the sun breaks through, and there is a routine we all form to keep from waking others in the household.

Footsteps and spacings secure...

During the winter months, when dawn is tardy in its breaking, my fingers tell me what my eyes cannot. I can make a bed in pitch darkness and never wake my loved one. Of course it is easier when the daylight extends itself and I can see what I’m doing, but I pride myself on never walking into furniture in the dead of night. I have the footsteps and the spacings secure in my mind, which knows more than my eyes do. There are people who live on the floors below us and I can pad noiselessly through the house, making nary a sound. I know where all the floor squeaks are and can avoid them.

Sharpened my senses...

All these little learnings are hardly rocket science and will certainly not change the world, but they have sharpened my senses so that I have a new appreciation of the life that uses all the senses and not just sight. I have come to enjoy the silent comforts of the darkness before the invasion of the light.

Monsters do not live in the darkness...

I have finally learned that monsters do not live in the darkness but in the imagination and that the silent night will keep our secrets easily and effortlessly for as long as we wish it to.

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