Dawning

I sat here for a moment and wondered what to label this particular blog entry. The I-wish-I-wrote silly girl in me always likes to to attempt to come up with something fun and different, but my mind grew blank. I vaguely knew of what I wanted to write, but as usual, I opened blogger without any exact idea in mind. As usual, my brain vomits in eruption of chaos and spews out of my fingertips. In less than 30 seconds, the title slammed into me.

The time is 7:10am on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009. This is my first blog entry for the new year. Anyone who knows me at all is probably sighing at the time of the writing. No, I'm not waking up at my usual morning time. You are correct, for those who attempted a guess: I have yet to sleep.

My initial thought is, as usual, to blame someone else, and in this case, it would be the ever delightful and disgustingly talented Susan Elizabeth Phillips. For those who have not yet had the honor of reading her book, AIN'T SHE SWEET, you should be flogged on general principle, however, once you do read it and question why you've been granted life to continue for such a blatant oversight as to have not read it sooner, I shall save my beatings. Even though this is by far the first time I've read this novel, once again, I read it to the end. Once again, I laughed. Once again, I cried. And once again, I sighed as it was over. Sugar Beth -- I know thy soul all too well.

As I finally turned out the light to sleep and rolled over, I noticed the odd smokey blue of the sky. My room faces east. Sunsets are more my thing than sunrises as I'm usually very much still asleep at this time of morning when the sun graces us with its appearance. But those few times I catch a sunrise, I cherish them. Not enough to arise early every day, but just those special accidental occasions such as this.

I don't miss sunrise-kisses as much as I thought I would. And there was a time in my not-so-recent past that I never thought I'd be able to proclaim that sentiment.

In a weird act, I gathered up my laptop and headed to the backyard, and climbed up onto the new trampoline Santa brought the kids. I hadn't even been back here since it was set up -- why? I mean, after all, I can see it from my bedroom window.

I see lots of things from my bedroom window.

I don't live them. I see them. From the enclosed sanctuary I've made for myself.

So... I'm out here now, sitting on this new trampoline, and since I live in the country, imagine this: a flat pasture, ten acres, the tallish grass brittle and brown, fall leaves gathered high along the cyclone fence that separates the backyard from the field. There are no buildings out here in the country save two very old, tinroofed barns, the boards gray and white with age, and tin tops rusted to a dull reddish brown, sagging in the middle, missing boards in the outter walls. Just a flat landscape turning softer blue as I type. In the far distance, the tree line looks almost like that of a sketch, the trees having no defining lines. Barbed wire pulls and leans on old pieces of wood, almost sticks really, something some old rancher somewhere thought would serve as fence posts. Along that fence, dividing this property from the neighbor's land, Scout, my black cat with white socked feet scampers along, probably wondering what I, of all people, am doing in the back yard, much less this time of day. I wonder where she's been overnight and what all she saw and played.

I'm watching the sky turn to fire. The pink that begins the sunrise. There's a very mild breeze. It's January 3rd, but it's Texas, and although it was bitterly cold with winds in December, now it's mild, maybe 55 degrees with this tiny breeze. A canopy of leafless branches of the huge old trees are above my head as I sit cross-legged in the middle of a black trampoline and realize what I coward I have become.

The sun winks shyly above the treeline in the distance.

And for the first time in a long, long time, I'm awake.