A Good Beginning

The First 85 Minutes

A Winter morning in Ohio.

It’s always dark.

The temperature is often in the low twenties, but sometimes it’s a rare, windy, and warm morning that is a deceptive windup for the real winter that is close by.

When the alarm goes off at 5:59, I rarely hit snooze anymore. In my 38 years, that’s new for me over the last year. Maybe waking up early had to develop with age. Or going to sleep early had to develop with age. Which helps in the waking up.

From my place in bed, I can see the living room lights winding around the hallway corner and barely hear the playlist that has begun our day for the last several years. I love waking to the lights and music precisely set to aid in ushering in a new day. Sometimes, like today, the smart home devices I’ve connected together and programmed to begin our days work how they’re supposed to.

I roll out of bed and walk a few paces across the hallway to wake up our oldest, Jude. He’s 12.

He’s always been one to lay in bed for hours on end at bedtime, his mind taking ages to slow down to the lull of sleep. We’ve begun encouraging him to read until he gets tired at night, and that seems to help.

When I come into his room, I use the hallway light to give him the first bit of light for the day, quietly wake him, and head out to start our coffee.

We’ve pre-measured coffee the evening before so all I have to do is flip a switch on our MoccaMaster to begin the brew of our favorite beans, Rost Coffee. Yes, I know that grinding coffee the evening before degrades some of the freshness, and yes I also know that I am ok with that. Saturdays are for Chemex, or AeroPress, or French Press, or another slow-brew method. Today is a weekday, and time dissipates quickly if you don't try to capture it and order it correctly.

We have lights under the top cabinets that once on, stay lit until the evening. These aren't smart lights, so I make the curve around the kitchen and turn on each of them with the flip of a few switches.

I head back to my room, change into my workout clothes quickly, throw my blue sweatshirt on, pull on the hood, and walk back down the hallway into Jude's room again. The lights in his room are still out. He's still sleeping. I usually say "Alright buddy, time to get up. I'm going to turn your lights on now".

I don't know if he needs the warning before the lights flood his room, but I know that I do. "Alexa, turn the lights on in Jude's room." It's about 6:06 in the morning now.

I leave his room and walk out the back sliding door. The air is cold. And dry.

It's still dark.

The ramp on our deck creaks and cracks beneath my feet as I take the path toward our detached garage. Instead of walking on the concrete, I cut through the flower bed that has a layer of river rocks on it. River rocks instead of mulch make for less upkeep.

I love that in the Winter, the river rocks seem to freeze together. There's no movement or settling in the stones as I step, only a rigid bed laid across the frozen dirt.

One of the best thrift store finds we’ve made is our kerosene heater. Twenty dollars of fuel gets us about two and a half weeks of heat for our morning workouts. I turn it on high and move to the other two small electric heaters and start them too. The barbells rest right over one of the heaters to hopefully take the chill out of the bar before we use it.

The heaters are set, the workout is written, and the lights and music are on. It’s about 6:12.

I head back inside because the coffee is ready by now. I fill up my Fellow mug, give Jude a hug goodbye because I won’t see him until I get home from work, and head back to the garage to begin.

Jessica does the rest of the morning routine with Jude. She is the best mom to our boys. She is a mixture of toughness, consistency, beauty, intuition, and so much more. Putting words together to describe her has never been easy because I always leave something out.

After she gets Jude on the bus, she’ll meet me in the garage about halfway through my workout to begin hers and I’ll go wake up Endy and Phoenix after I finish mine.

I walk outside, winded from the workout, and there are hints of light in the sky. It’s more like a black-and-white photo because of the grey, Winter skies. No pigments of color yet because of the flat light, except for the yellow hues of the porch lights and light peaking from the windows of our home.

The morning has begun well today. It’s 7:25, and I’m about to wake up the other boys.

There’s magic in the first 85 minutes of my weekdays this year. It hasn’t always been like this, and maybe it won’t last terribly long. But for now, I’ll remember the details that add up to what usually makes for a good beginning.

Good beginnings. That’s what I’m writing about. For me, good beginnings set the pace for what’s next. It’s taken me a while to have good beginnings like today.

Here’s to growth.