Morning

This morning I woke up without a stinging in my throat, and the bumbling ache that has accompanied me when walking down the stairs to coffee. The puppy didn't soil his crate for four solid nights in a row. Maybe something is working. Opening the sliding glass door, the cold hits my face, and I walked out into the early early morning with Jack. The bird cacophony. The faint hint of sun to the east making the sky look like a bleeding watercolor. The cold dampness of a post-rain morning. And the green. The luscious green. A thousand greens in an unassuming suburban backyard...I wanted to savor the moment. The delicious peace. I remember many years ago my friend Carol telling me about a morning at the beach where she thought, "I wonder if this is the best day of my life." And I have thought of that often...I wonder if this is the best moment of my life. The quiet of a random morning in April when the dog forced me to go outside, I inhaled the beauty of a Spring morning and felt grateful.

All my best moments have been in the morning, among them are all the mornings waking up next to Sam. Mornings walking in Italy alone where I felt so brave, so strong, where I went to make peace with myself...a vision quest with Chianti. The delicious April morning when I was in labor with Beatrice. Mornings in Tucson when I came to work before it was light, and I would finish the morning chores quickly so I could watch the sun rise reflected on the Catalinas with my coffee maybe a cigarette (ah, youth.)

After I wrote this post, I wanted to erase it. There are easy things to blog about--the despair, the moments of devastation when you have to answer a question about your children, the trembling, the fears...but what of those moments where you have a fleeing sense of peace, not about your baby's death, not about your life now, but a sense of peace in the universe? A moment of calm presence. Can I even have a best moment of my life now, or even a fairly decent moment, after the death of my daughter? Does it betray her? Does it betray me? Can my best moment be alone, or must it be something deeper than watching my puppy peepee in the deep dewy mist chilled by the morning air, warmed by my love of morning?