"To Be Alive on This Fresh Morning"

How old foes can become new friends

Mary Oliver quote by Rachel Eck Lettering

It’s 6:46 am and I am already out the door, walking down the gorgeous, soft-focus green streets of Brookline, Massachusetts. I adore morning walks. Not too many souls out and about, but the birds and chipmunks and rabbits already beginning their day. Hardly any cars rush by me at this hour and I feel rich, getting the spring versions of the small streets that branch off to the north and south of Beacon Street all to myself. This morning, a golden retriever out for her morning walk catches my eye, and we share a moment of quiet communion. How did we get this lucky? How has it come to pass that she and I get to experience such a peaceful Sunday morning in late April? In this moment, in the midst of all that feels brutal, I feel sure that tiny miracles still exist.

I have fallen more and more in love with morning walks over the last five or six years, but admittedly don’t usually get out walking until eight or nine most days. Today’s unusually early stroll is courtesy of catching an early train to work at Orchard House, where I work as a historical docent and educator. When I first began working at the House back in 2019, I would regularly leave my apartment at 6:20 am in order to catch the only train from Boston that would allow me to arrive at the House for work later that morning on time.

It was mid-November when I had my first early morning trip to the House and it was bitter cold and dark, but I must admit, I still felt a zest for that crack of dawn commute. It was as if a tiny but tenacious flame burned in my chest, keeping me warm and motivated for such an early departure during those early days. Getting to be part of the inimitable community at the House was gift enough, and the need to dress in the dark and leave the apartment before the sun was fully up somehow only added to the sense of sacredness of those mornings for me.

I need to pause here to make a confession: I used to dislike mornings. Ok. I used to hate mornings. I spent a long time railing against my alarm clock, and long before that, my mother’s voice calling up the stairs to my childhood bedroom: “Melissa! Time to get UP!”

I have so much compassion for my kind mother, who for all the years of my schooling, had the unenviable task of trying to coax me out of bed and then onto the school bus, unable to drive me to school most mornings if I missed the bus because she began her day quite early herself, working out of our home doing childcare.

I don’t LIKE mornings! I decreed. They found me sleepy, groggy, grumpy, and feeling sick. So sick, in fact, that I narrowed passed first grade, but not because of my academic performance. I was in danger of failing the year because of the fact that I had missed an incredible number of days of school that year due to being (literally) sick with anxiety. Getting up early for school on those mornings brought on such a high level of panic that manifested not in thoughts of “I’m nervous to go to school,” but in the very real physical sensation of feeling sick to my stomach.

Despite my mother’s fears of me oversleeping and missing the bus most mornings, I did in fact get to school nearly every day, only to feel overcome with nausea in my homeroom, go to the nurse’s office mid-morning, and eventually being picked up by my mom an hour or two later. If I had a nickel for every late morning I spent laying on my parents’ blue and red flowered couch that year, eating saltines and watching old school Nickelodeon shows, well…move over, Bridgertons. New money has arrived in the Ton.

When I moved into the dorms my first year of college, my mom was no longer there to make sure I was up in time for class, but my roommate courageously took on that task.

“Feet on the floor, Lauricella - feet on the floor!” My alarm would go off, but she would never trust that I was actually awake until she saw proof that I was physically getting out of bed, lest she leave for class and I fall back asleep.

I railed against mornings LOUDLY, and to anyone who would listen. I would joke with my then-boyfriend (now my husband) how much I was “Not a Morning Person!” Over time, what began as a light hearted, innocent joke about hating mornings felt like it was becoming a crystalized part of my identity that I clung to tightly. Soon, I wasn’t just eager to declare that I wasn’t a morning person, I needed to let everyone else who found value in waking early know that there was something objectionable about their own preference for getting an earlier start to the day.

“He gets up at 6 AM? And meditates (or goes running, or journals, or watched the sun come up)? UGHHHHH. No. No. No. Just NO!”

You’ve heard these remarks from folks like myself, right? For a long time, it was my default to declare when I don’t like something (Mornings! Push-ups! Black olives!) and soon after, I was quick to start a campaign as to why no one else in their right mind would like these things either.