Sunday Morning Wakeful Ones
Who stays awake when they could sleep to their heart’s content?
Pregnant women, dog lovers, fans of reading in sleeping homes, those who delight in wandering through dewy early-morning meadows…
And someone who didn’t used to sleep, but now perches on a little cloud and watches us with wonder, my Grandma.
On summer Sundays, she would rise early to iron Grandpa’s festive trousers, press her day-off scarf with the iron, and make it to early mass—after first feeding her chickens, who never liked to sleep.
On early summer Sunday mornings, my Mom is the first to wake.
Quietly slipping out of the “fortress” of grandchildren resting after a day of adventures, she fills the house with the smell of freshly made pancakes, stacking them into a tall tower that will soon disappear once the “army” of messy-haired kids wakes up.
7:00 a.m. Sunday.
A morning without an alarm.
Eyes still small and sleepy.
I feel the first little kicks in my belly.
“My heart captain is probably stretching,” I smile to myself.
At the movement from my chest, the new little house resident—the “baby dog”—perks up.
Silently, the two of us slip out of the sleeping house.
The kettle whistles.
My companion’s breakfast bowl clatters.
After a slow breakfast, we lock the door and head across the meadows.
They are dewy.
After yesterday’s polka with the rams and the rain, the forest smells of an indescribable freshness.
Wild strawberries bloom by the roadside.
Tiny lingonberry flowers carpet the ground.
Wild poppies have begun to bloom.
Lupines raise their purple tails.
After a long walk, in the silence of Sunday, we return.
I carry a sweet little bouquet of meadow flowers in my hands.
And in my heart, the feeling that it’s so early, yet so many good emotions have already been gathered.
Before my eyes steams a freshly baked new day.
Coffee unfinished, a breathtakingly beautiful book lying beside it.
I sway gently on the terrace and think:
How wonderful that I didn’t sleep through all of this.
Lover of dogs, books, and dewy meadows,
V.
