Good morning, beautiful

I woke up this morning, wide awake, at 4:20am. The first thought that crossed my mind was, "I wonder if C-baby's Koolaid ever went home," being that we were heading to bed around the time he showed up at our house last night. So I did what any mother of a 20+-year-old would do - turned over and went back to sleep. Just kidding - I got up and stumbled downstairs in the dark, peered in at my daughter's bed, tried to discern if it was one lump or two (one, I concluded), peered out at the dark driveway looking for foreign objects (Koolaid's car), and went back upstairs and crawled back into bed. After taking a bathroom break of course. And then I laid there. Pappa Bear mumbled half-asleep, "So did he go home?" "Yep." And with that, he was sound asleep again. Once my mind is awake, it's pretty tough to convince it to go back to sleep again. I argued with it: "You could use two more hours of sleep." "If I lie here long enough, you WILL go back to sleep." Right about the time Pappa Bear would have to get up and go to work. It didn't work. The mind wasn't listening. Then a brand new thought arose: "I could just get up now." Up? at 5:00am? Who does that, besides cowboys and mail carriers? What on earth would I do at that hour? I should just go back to sleep. Now, please. So after about thirty minutes of mind-twirling thoughts like these I checked the weather (no, I didn't get out of bed to look out a window, pick up a paper or turn on the TV. Without getting out of bed, I powered up my iPhone and checked Weather.com). If it was currently cloudy, I would force myself to go back to sleep. But if it was clear... well, maybe it wouldn't kill me to go down by the lake for the sunrise. It was clear. Darn. No excuse to stay in bed now. On my way down the road towards the lake, I saw a deer standing at the edge of a clearing. I didn't even attempt a photo, she was too far away for the poor little zoom on my Canon SD1000 Elph camera. I stood still and watched her while she kept a very close eye on me. I decided to walk on a bit, and as I passed by her I could now see a spotted fawn standing near her. I stopped again. She advanced towards me, stomping a leg with each step. Then she snorted, and the fawn leaped into action, bounding across the grassy space and stopping just before the road. I kept walking, closing the gap between me and the fawn. Mamma wasn't far behind, and the fawn bounced across the road with Mamma right on her tail. Now there's something you just don't see if you stay in bed until well after sunrise. And here's something else you just don't see if you stay in bed until after 5:30am on the second day of summer: For over twenty minutes, I sat on the dock and listened to the world wake itself up, snapping a photo every minute or so. Sparrows, robins, chickadees, grackles, crows, even a loon. They were all in on pulling the sun out of the trees and casting it up over the glistening lake. I might be very tired by 2:00pm today. I might feel like I need a nap in the worst way. But let me tell you, it was worth missing two hours of sleep this morning. For the deer, and the fawn, and the birds, and the fish, and the water and the golden sun. Amen.