Son to Sunrise

3:26a.m. Waking, walking to the kitchen to make coffee. The man in the living room is writing on the computer. He is my son. He hasn’t gone to bed yet. We have this splendid time in the dark and silence. We talk a bit at the end of his day, the beginning of mine. I hear the classical music in his headphones. I smile to think what would be coming our of mine.

I didn’t mean to get up this early. He didn’t mean to stay up this late. We didn’t mean to meet in the middle of the night, when the harbor is empty and the sun is still sleeping.

It’s the middle of his visit. We have no rush to accomplish so many conversational things. Before we settle in to the quiet, I tell him what I hope we can do together before his leaving. He tells me about his tradition of cleaning out his email over Christmas vacation.

I begin my work. He returns to his. We work silently, side by side, like two children in a sandbox, taking comfort knowing the other is there. He finishes up and says he’ll see me later. I think that’s a wonderful thought, a lovely sentence to move me forward into my daytime.

6:26a.m. Working. My son is sleeping. The sun the still has not begun to show its colors in the sky. Will it turn the harbor waters a magnificent teal blue? Will the sky gray with the clouds of a Chicago winter sky? Will it have the lavenders and pinks that stopped for minutes yesterday morning?

I think of the boy who came into the world with so much promise, how once I never could have imagined this night.

From son to man. From possibility to glorious sunrise.

−me strauss Letting me be