It is rare that the house is quiet, but early mornings, before the kids and Kevin, dogs and cats, goats and geese wake up, the only thing you can hear is the hum of the Rayburn kicking in to turn the heating on. I arrive at my desk - the big sanded oak dining table - with a coffee and a big glass of water no later than 5am.
I have always been a morning person, up long before sunrise. I remember as a child waiting eagerly for the national anthem to play on TV in the morning - signalling the start of cartoons and the end of my early morning boredom.
When the kids were little, I would gladly do the morning shift with them, as long as I could hand them over at 8pm to go to bed. Kevin, a night owl, was more than happy with this arrangement and I count it one of the key reasons our marriage survived those baby and toddler years.
In those early days of parenting, those morning hours were when I could get work done. I started two businesses working solely between 4-8am. I’d plop sleepy small kids in front of the TV, grateful for the modern invention of 24 hour programming, and work away until we needed to be somewhere, taking breaks for breakfast and changes as required. Mornings were quiet and slow - the needs of the toddlers usually easily met by a snack or a cuddle with nowhere to be as I worked from home around the kids.
These days I still start my mornings at my desk with work, but after 6am cadence of the early hours is very different. The children (now mostly teenagers) interrupt my mornings in a different way— predominately with 11.2million wake up calls to get all 4 out of the house on time and three different school runs before 9am. The physical work of getting them ready is mostly in the past as they can generally dress themselves, instead I spend my mornings doing the mental aerobics of making sure they have lunch money/trombones/forms/not their brother’s shoes/a coat/aren’t late for the bus/know what they are doing after school. Some mornings I feel the purpose and drive that I naturally wake up with seep out of the soles of my slippers as I call upstairs for the 11th time “You are going to be late for the bus and I am going to have to drive you to school!!!”
As we tumble out of the house for the first school run before 7am, the goats hear us and start calling across the courtyard for breakfast. They get louder at the 8 o’clock school run and wake up Loretta the pig who starts yelling for me if she hears my voice who ensures every being within a 200m radius is wide awake. I grab a bucket and soak their feed as I make Theo’s porridge on the stove, telling each dependent - human, porcine and caprine - that breakfast will just be 5 more minutes.
Always with not quite enough time to spare, we do chores as we rush to get the final kid to school (Theo likes to help with chores as the ultimate delaying tactic to avoid school). Goats burst out of the barn with Loretta trotting behind. The chickens and ducks look like a shark feeding frenzy as they try to eat before the geese notice they have been fed. The rabbits run rings of excitement as we top up their feeders and the dogs run to the car knowing that the final school run of the morning means its time to head out for their walk - all to the sound of me repeating over and over “We need to hurry!! We are going to be late!!!”
And we always are, but we make it to school and the animals get fed and there is even a piece of toast eaten and a load of laundry hung out and the dogs walked and I end back at the dining room table after 10am. I am usually on my 3rd cup of coffee by then - so strong Kevin has concerns about my stomach lining - but we’ve made it. There are mornings I can feel my self vibrating from the combination of coffee and adrenaline and I know that I spend a large amount of my drive and energy on just these early hours. The rest of the day won’t be as productive as it could’ve been if I didn’t have the kids and the animals and the chaos.
But I also know that as much as I find the morning chaos a challenge to my love of quiet, I know one day soon it won’t be there and I will miss it. The seasons will shift and the house will be emptier and I will be able to use that part of my brain that currently holds the schedules and belongings and needs of 4 kids for something more my own.
But for right now, I just need another cup of coffee.
Hope your day is a good one!!
Kat
Thank you all for the orders for Life in the Making: Sourdough! You can still order your copy here:
Good morning, from Vermont USA! I am reading this while, drinking a cup of espresso, and I am hooked.❤️
Beautifully expressed