I’m nestled cozily in my chair, still wearing my pajamas, socks, and slippers. Hat and gloves ward off the damp chill of the early morning. My husband hands me a cup of coffee, and I take it gratefully, watching the steam rise, curl, and dissipate into the morning air.
The sky has that expectant pink hue to it. We are also expectant, having risen early from our little camping trailer to greet the sunrise. This was a planned thing, involving Google searches of when the sun would rise, earlier bedtime the night before, and several alarms set. Waking up on a campsite, in the middle of the woods with a view of a lake, is a much more pleasant experience than waking up on a weekday at home, when we are tending to mundane things like emptying the dishwasher and transferring wet clothes to the dryer before we rush off to work trying not to spill hot coffee on ourselves or the car.
Even though no one else is near us at the campsite, we still whisper to each other between sips of coffee. There are long silences, too, as we each drift into our own thoughts. We comment on the layers and layers of birdsong, the way the birds call and answer each other from treetops. To me it always sounds like the songbirds are performing an avant garde symphony, complete with percussion from the woodpeckers. The geese, who flit and land ungracefully with a splash on the calm surface of the water sound to me like they are gossiping. Their honks and screeches sound like laughter, but not happy laughter — mean girl laughter.
When I think the sky can’t get any pinker, it does, over and over, deepening its hue. There are some clouds on the horizon, or so we think. It is hard to tell whether anything will happen at all. I yawn; he gets up to pour another cup of coffee. The squirrels are awake now, too. I wonder if they wait for the sunrise each morning, or if some squirrels burrow down deeper into their nests, wanting to snooze for 10 more minutes like I often do.
It feels as though we’ve been waiting for a long time already. I eye the clouds at the horizon.
“Maybe it’s not going to happen today…because of the clouds,” I say.
“It’ll come,” he tells me. “Let’s wait another minute.”
We fall back into silence. The birds are getting louder. More geese are gathering on the lake.
“Hmmm,” he says. “Maybe there are too many clouds. Maybe we won’t see much of a sunrise this morning after all.”
It’s my turn to say, “It’ll come. Let’s wait another minute.”
The sun crowns at the horizon when it’s good and ready; the most beautiful, pink sun, just peeking over the hills beyond the lake. We’ve been waiting for so long that we practically feel honored that the sun decided to show at all, much less in such a glorious, glowing fashion. From that moment, time speeds up, and we hold our breath as light floods the sky, the trees, even the gossiping geese.
