Best Part of the Day - The Beginning

Sometimes the best part of the day is the beginning. Perhaps it's the pink innocence viewed only by looking up or a glimpse of the morning's original intention, which, like most, are well-meant.

An hour later and this sky is gray as a gun and just as menacing. When I was a little girl I asked my father what our souls looked like, and he used the white sheet metaphor: starts clean, sins are the spots that dirty it. Confession was a spiritual laundry day back then. Speak your sins, say your Act of Contrition, your 2o Hail Marys and come out clean all over again. I'm beginning to use these morning skies as evidence of the day's soul---clean and clear and open, if not ready, for what comes.

I try to remind myself, in these moments (all fifteen of them), that whatever worries I went to bed with, or rolled over and nudged awake in the night, do not need to be resurrected for the day. What purpose do they serve? How does putting another nail into my head help me create a new life?

News about a job I really thought I had a chance of getting came yesterday after a relatively brief but obnoxious game of phone tag lasting two days (that's a week in applicant world). I didn't get it, obviously. Added to the weight of what's been a pretty trying year (and I know there are people close to me who have had an even worse year), I felt for a while that I should just let the bilge rise in my throat and cry it all out. But I am not much of a cryer and so switched to some good, old-fashioned self pity. But self pity is passe, isn't it? I was left with getting back on the job boards and the Linkedin and the cookie jar and the busy work and so filled in the rest of the day. A sympathetic email from a good friend almost made me cry.

Just like rain is not far from the silvery pink dawn, tears are not far from my throat.

And again, the dawn comes, blue this time with tinges of green, and I decide that one day was enough to mourn that lost opportunity. Today is for housework and preparation: my sister and brother-in-law are coming. Christmas will be here tonight.