Mom’s Gift: Taking a Nature Pause in Early Morning

Like many of you, I’m thinking of my mother today. Though an outgoing person, she had a contemplative side. She often sat on the porch swing, coffee cup in hand, savoring tranquility. Sometimes I’d slip outside and join her, watching her as she observed birds, blooms, and day breaking through the tree canopy.

In recent years, I took up the habit of using the early hours to walk, sit quietly, or journal—in the open air with devices shut off. I use this time to center before taking on the day’s busyness (e.g., internet noise, the news cycle, to-do lists, productivity pressures). In doing so, I relearned a lesson from Mom: there’s beauty in common scenes unfolding before you if you stop to see them. When I lived in Atlanta, walking along the Chattahoochee River offered this daily gift.

Excerpt from “Chattahoochee: Songs I Never Heard till Now”

I dabble my feet by a lichen-bearded log
heard by Canada geese on its bank-hollowing fall
. . . I draw a sharp breath, rocked by the grace
of a flock, heads erect, paddling sideways
and honking, tugged southward, and mourn
the questions never asked of my mother:
Did you paddle the river and cast long,
slow-motion lines—ambitionless to net
a mess of sun-flashed rainbow trout?
You, the dreamer, whose river fortune
I never knew, what tunes did you hum
to bankside gurgles and midstream rapids?