I have a persistent dream of sleeping in (with breakfast in bed!) but I wake early, before the sun is up.

I always have. It's a habit now, born of long years of waking with babies.

I never fail to see the sun rise, even when I don't want to. I see it rise through bullying clouds, over demin skies, through a driving curtain of snow, kindly down upon birds at the feeder, hyachinth in brave early bloom. I see the deer near a copse of trees glance up, as if they, too, haven't seen sunrise before. I see the rabbits on the lawn, near the bushes, and the hawks that hover, speculatively, above them, hoping for an early breakfast.

I see the lights blink on in the houses below the hill that was called Story Hill before we came to live here on it. I see the first car that pulls out of a drive without need for putting on the headlinghts. Sometimes, I see a flurry of people outside. Someone's sick. Someone's celebrating Someone's headed off for an adventure. Someone has an early job.

Each of those lighted windows has a story behind it. Someone's happy, or troubled. Someone's pulling on long underwear to go to the barn or out for a run, both feeling the same sense of urgent obligation. A baby's coming. A long life is turning toward its close. The religious are making ready for church. The ambitious are making ready to do an online trade. The lonely are seeking the comfort of friends inside the TV. The wise are seeeking contemplation in the hour before responsibility intrudes.

As the red sun rises from its wallow and makes its gradual progress upward, burnishing gold as a medieval coin. I do humble tasks -- load up laundry, replace rolls of tissue, drink my tea. I clean away the remannts of the teenagers' ravenous midnight snack scavenging (they'll pay for this later on), and set in place the framework for a new day. I let the dog out once for his urgencies, once for his need to chase something he can never catch.

I let thoughts in, about things I chase that I'll never catch.

I think of my brother, my niece, my sister-in-law expecting her third baby. I think of my those I love and lvoed: old friends, some now dead, some now gone from me by their own wil, some simply too far away to be anything in my mind but fond presences. I think of my new friends and wonder if they'll ever be old friends. I wonder why the world is too busy and large for friendship, and why cards and jewelry too often take the place of handshakes and voices. I remember when it was not. I think back to a time, during my lifetime, when there were lazy spaces, and not only for me, for everyone I knew, and now there are not. Nothing has changed. Time is still time. Only our attitude toward it is different. I think about large topics that overwhelm me: why we want to devour the world for oil, and the soil for corn to replace the oil, but what will replace the soil?

These are the thoughts others have at night.

But night feels safe to me.

Sunrise is different. It's a lonesome time for me, morning. I don't think I feel about it the way others do. At night, I'm able to slip into the chrysallis of sleep, with the illusion, however daft, that tomorrow I can begin to make better of today's wrongs - that i can be better at what I do, more silent, more caring, more thoughtful, more noticing.

Invariably, this is when I write to you.

These next months are ones fraught with excitement and worry. A new book is about to come. It's different from what I've done before. It has the qualities of a thriller and yet centers around a family loss; but what book does not? It digs deep at moral quandries. I don't know if people will like it, and it's going to have to make it on its own, with only the loyalties of my readers and favorite critics to propel it, because all the hopes for a grand parade of welcome and pre-publicaiton "buzz" have come to naught. I see all the managed presentation of others' books, of greater or lesser worth, and feel envy. I banish the envy, and reckon that this is their time, that they have found wiser ways than I have to usher their creations into the world.

I was never good at the process of plating and presenting, even with a meal. I worry about that as the sun rises. It's a necessity now, to be a brand, not simply a writer of tales. I ought to learn how to be one.

Still, it's an honest book, and I hope it receives an honest reception. Like a little mother with a heavy child, as Emily Dickinson, once wrote, I hope for the strength I will need to bring it forth without the arms that once supported me in efforts such as these. Times are lean. The best help in publishing goes to those who need it least. It makes sense, because in these known "brands," the favorites that go off at even odds, are known returns. There are people I meet who are still asking me when my LAST novel is going to be published!

But I believe in stories, and their power. And someone, out there, will appreciate the trade without the tricks.

I notice other voices stirring. My hour of pondering is expired.

It's time for toast and honey, and Sippee cups and coffee cups. Time to hit the treadmill, and later, hit the books with elementary-school kids. It's time to hear the day and not to fear it.

Is there anyone else who, as I do, feels so keenly the weight of the morning? Is there anyone else who isn't stirred to hope by the sunrise? I'm a "morning person," as they say, who does her best before noon, and by three feels as though the day might as well wind down to its close. So why does my hour alone with the sun feel like an hour alone with the irrevocable fact of time's passage?

Why do I have to count my blessings in the morning, when they're so apparent to me at nightfall?

And yet, my tenuous salute to the sun tells me I'm alive. There's that simple fact to smile upon. I'm healthy and my children are healthy. Fortunes rise and fall; disappointments and shards of joy pierce each beginning day; they pressage the joys and disappointments to come, the expectations that will be fulfilled and those that will be dashed.

But day's begun. I'm the first witness, I feel on some mornings. And then I watch as others join to witness. I've seen the sun again. It isn't my pal. The moon inspires me more. But it's resolute. I'm resolute, too.

One of these mornings, I'm going to make friends with the sun, and see it through a haze of hope.

Jackie Mitchard