Gray Mornings

Years ago, when my daily life was different and my kids were smaller and what might have been a blog was thoughts for a book, I wrote about how quiet (and slightly dull) things were on the days when the kids had no school and I went to work. No early morning, brightly colored preschool TV shows. No little morning songs and cuddling on the couch with little people in footy pajamas.
 
My kids are older now. They are beyond preschool TV. Even the mornings when they are up leave little time for couch snuggling, and nobody really wears footy pajamas anymore.
 
But this morning, as I left home earlier, only one child to get off to school, the others still sound asleep, I may have been less stressed and less tired since I was wrangling only one kid breakfast and one kid lunch, but I was also a little sad. I voted. I ran errands. I did things that needed to be done. But as I wrote about all those years ago, the "colors" of my morning were missing. Perhaps I was better off--after all, most days, I feel as though I have lived three days by 9am. But the absence of that whole set of morning things, even if they're not as toddler sweet as they once were, had my day starting out just a little gray. And no one wants to live gray for too long.
 
The school day off is over (at least until the next one next week), so I will be back to a morning of chaos--short order cook, fashion police, and, if there's time, couch cuddler. And though I may be tired later, and have no time for errands, I wouldn't have it any other way.