whatever fear invents, i swear it makes no sense

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

every morning when i was in ocosingo, i'd wake up and go to the kitchen. usually jan would be in there, and we'd talk a little. she was a morning person - she said she had to have her mornings, and plus she was the cook so she had to be up early. sometimes i'd help her set the table, other times i would just grab a cup of coffee. sometimes she'd put the sugar in for me. i would go sit on the roof of the bible school before breakfast and watch the fog slowly rise from the floor of the valley.

jan was the wife of pablo. her eyes were the color of the light blue morning sky. she was always looking at me lovingly. she was always timidly and softly putting her hand on my back at dinner when i was acting particularly american - loud, funny and sensitive. sometimes her eyes were sad and sometimes i felt like all of the joy in me couldn't be enough for her. moving from michigan to chiapas hadn't been easy when she'd first done it 30 years ago, and it hadn't gotten any easier. so i stayed close to her, hoping maybe the naive, innocent love i felt for mexico and life there could be enough for the both of us. she said that she could never move back to america, but i knew that didn't mean that she was perfectly settled in this culture either.

i loved to hear her talk about her family in michigan. i loved when she told me about the flowers that used to grow at her mother's house and how much she loved watching football with her dad when she was growing up. i loved going to her house and asking her about everything on her walls - because i loved to hear her talk about her mother, who was a painter. i loved talking to her about my mother too. both of our mothers made us cinnamon toast and hot tea. both of our fathers made popcorn on sunday nights. jan and i both loved fall the most.

every morning now before work, i wake up early. to take a walk, or just to sit, and drink some coffee. i allow myself the time to get acquainted with the day. i meet the softness, the gentleness, the quietness of the morning. i used to overlook it. but now i can't live without it. it is because of jan that i am now able to love morning.

in so many ways, jan and i were complete opposites. and i watched us all summer-long learning from one another, thriving off of one another, and quietly adoring one another in our differences. she taught me humility. she showed me what it was like to be selfless. she said that people had always been making decisions for her, that she never really knew what she actually wanted. she was devoted to her family. she was quiet. she was dangerously vulnerable, but sometimes cooler than the morning breeze that would blow over us both when we'd wake, in separate rooms, as separate people, with separate histories. And though we were separate, we woke early for the same purpose.

to get those couple of minutes to breathe life. to try to learn hear our own voices before other people and things started to overpower them. to find peace. to believe in a new day. for the stillness.

and now we both rise, in separate cities, in separate countries, with separate days ahead of us - but every morning reminds me of her. its gentleness, its humility and its quiet. it reminds me of a woman, so unlike me, who taught me to be more like the morning.