Kimberlee K.

One of my goals for this year is to have slower mornings. And in thinking about what makes a morning slow—what makes a morning good (to me)—I thought about the different kinds of mornings I’ve experienced throughout my life.

So often we forget that our mornings, however they look right now, may only look like this—exactly like this—for so long. Through foreseen or unexpected circumstances, our mornings in one month, one year, five years, etc. may look entirely different (for better or for worse).

This has been proven over the course of my life as I’ve seen mornings come in so many shapes and sizes, so many sounds and colors, so many places and people.

Here are just a few:

In the small, two-bedroom house my family lived in when I was a preteen, my two siblings and I shared a room. My dad went to work early, so my mom took all three of us to school. I don’t remember having an alarm clock, so I assume one of my parents walked in and woke us all up, watching as the three of us—layered on a bunk bed and pull-out trundle mattress—shifted and yawned, awakening into another day.

Though crowded, I don’t remember ever fighting over the lone bathroom. We took turns, shuffling in and out and then over to the dining room table for breakfast. My brother, the youngest, was set up to watch a show in the morning as we gathered what we needed—backpacks, art projects, lunch boxes, PE clothes, signed field trip slips, etc.—and popped in and out of the living room to get him dressed. As a result, the television became our compass, letting us know where we were in the morning. Dragontales was the siren call for the twenty remaining minutes of being on time—if the credits rolled and we saw the theme song for Clifford the Big Red Dog, we were going to be late.

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When we lived with my grandparents, I felt the weight of being a teenager the strongest in the morning. I often woke up cranky, quiet, wanting a few minutes to sit by myself, but my grandpa would have none of it. He was already up and dressed when I trudged out for breakfast squinting my eyes at the open windows and golden California sun shining through the curtains my grandma handmade. A step aerobics workout was playing on the television in the living room, and my grandma would offer a small wave as she focused, sweat beading on her forehead.

“Morning,” I’d offer, obligatorily.

“Morning,” my grandpa would reply, playfully mocking my tone.

He would poke and prod at me, trying to get me to smile. A bag of prunes would be open on the table beside a box of donut holes. A small television with tall antennas played Good Day LA or Live with Regis and Kelly. He’d shove the donut holes at me and I’d pop one in my mouth with a smirk, then he’d tweak the antennas to make the channel come in clearer.

“Kimi Kimmmmmm!” he’d say if silence stretched between us for too long, and then he’d point to the television, commenting on someone’s outfit, on a movie coming out, or in response to some celebrity gossip being discussed. All while grandma finished her workout, got in and out of the shower, and then came to ask whoever was sitting at the table—me, my grandpa, my sister—to fluff the back of her hair with a pick comb to ensure there were no gaps.

“Be good!” my grandpa would say as my siblings and I filed out the door.

“I’ll try!”

“That’s all we can do.”

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The first day of school always offered a kind of mysticism for me. While I was nervous about the new year, the new classes, the new people in the classes, I loved the idea of a fresh start. So in the days leading up to the first day of a new school year, I’d make lists in my head of changes I wanted to make. I’d lay out my outfits the night before, occasionally prepack my lunch, and always always always make a promise to myself that I’d set an earlier alarm and not press snooze.

One year, after receiving an iPod from my grandparents for my birthday, and then a combo charging dock + speaker/clock for Christmas, I decided I would use it as my alarm. I marveled at the ability to set any song on my iPod as my alarm, it made me feel like I could add a soundtrack to my life—something I desperately craved as I binge watched romantic comedies I’d rent in batches from my local Hollywood Video. While I don’t remember the first song I picked, I remember leaping out of bed, slightly overwhelmed, as I didn’t know the alarm feature was designed to slowly increase the volume, so by the time I heard it, it was already beginning to play at full blast. I brushed my teeth and got dressed, and then sat in the dark, peaking out the windows at the sun that hadn’t even come up yet.

I remember feeling annoyed, thinking, what’s the point of this? in regard to waking up early. I thought it was boring, I wanted to go back to sleep.I only used that alarm clock two or three times afterward, and was more often woken up by my television that I fell asleep to every night, as it was playing and replaying the DVD menu of whatever movie I was watching the night before at full blast.

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Some mornings are clear and vivid, repetitive but reliable and nostalgic. Some mornings I only remember in glimpses, like my small feet tip-toeing down the hallway of my childhood home, desperate not to make any noise so I could sneak into the living room and play Nintendo 64 before anyone woke up;  or the sound of my sister stirring together ingredients for pancakes that, when scooped onto the griddle, would waft the smell of chocolate and vanilla under my bedroom door; or the mornings when we were going on family vacations, or spending the day at Disneyland, or when a friend was coming to pick me up—that feeling of barely sleeping through the night and wondering how I could pop out of bed so easily, when usually it felt like an uphill battle.

As an adult, I’ve spent mornings on my friends’ couches, watching their small children play in their pajamas, or smiling at babies who are not quite awake enough to play but are more than willing to cuddle. I’ve woken up early to go on runs while training for the marathon, well aware that the Southern California sun puts a time limit on healthy exercise in the summers. And woken up earlier to hustle down to the dock in order to get out on the lake and start trolling when the morning bite is still good. These days, I often hustle through a morning routine on weekdays, and lounge through one on weekends. I stay in my robe, I read, I position myself on my couch to face the windows even though the sun is bright.

A lot about how I spend my mornings can be traced back to the ways I saw my parents and grandparents do it. So much of what bugged me as a grumpy teenager makes sense to me as an adult. I still like to go slow, but I understand the rush of excitement to wake up and see my favorite people. My mornings look different than they have in parts of my past, and they’ll look different in certain parts of my future. So I’m trying my best to honor the mornings I’ve had, to appreciate the mornings I have, and to look forward to the mornings I’ll experience one day.

They all shape what a morning is to me, and I’m constantly amazed by how wonderful they can be.