Sunrise

My daughter woke me up this morning, as she usually does, yelling, “Come see, come see. Daddy comes see, come see the sunrise… so orange and blue. comes see. Daddy look, daddy look…” She chants come see come see until I finally throw off the warm blankets and brave the morning chill, sloshing my feet through the cold drafts of air that lie like puddles on the creaking wood floor.

It’s still dark outside so I trip and stumble on half a dozen toys the girls did not put away last night, but eventually I make it to the back door where they’re both now standing, looking out at the sunrise, pointing so I don’t miss it. We all three stand there, staring at the coming sun for a few minutes.

At some point I usually take a break to make coffee. We take turns cranking the hand grinder. Sometimes the girls wander off and start to play, but once I get the moka pot on the stove and start Corrinne’s drip brewer, we go back to the table by the back door and sit down in a small, but thus far sturdy, wooden chair and my daughters climb up into my lap, one straddling each leg, and we watch the sky turn pink and then fade to yellow as the first rays of actual sun break through the skeletal trees.

By then the coffee is ready, but there’s no way to get to it without disrupting the balance of things. So we listen to it bubbling away on the stove and watch the light come into the world.