good day

I got up an hour before I had to this morning which is some ungodly hour like 5 am. I wanted to sit in the house before I woke up the children. I wanted to have coffee alone without being rushed to have coffee and I wanted to be with my manuscript before I sent it off.

It reminds me of the ritual of sitting with the dead, how sitting alone in a room with something you can’t change (already in its envelope) is peaceful somehow. Everything you want to say comes to the room, everything you need to let go of. I know that in this culture we have done away with the things that make us more human. I know, because I have lived in a culture where it has not yet gone. When you are there when someone dies and they are not hooked up to any machines but to you, your hand. And life is something daily you are grateful for.

One of the first things I did in Haiti was sit in a grieving room with a woman who had lost her husband, for days we sat on mats and talked, and sometimes we were just silent. But the ability to be still made us more.

I go to that room in my head. The place where I am quiet but not alone and sometimes in real life I go there before the children wake and when I am the first person to see the sky get up and then I know, it will a good day.