Before My Humans Wake

A small penny spider bounces close above my wet nose as I watch its elegant dance out of half opened eyes. Sleep heavily guards my full vision and blocks the thin delegate web. Watching the spider dancing in the first light of the day, creates a yearning in my soul to leap out of the front door and through the frost covered grass.

The rising light tells me it is nearing morning, but I know it’ll be awhile before the rest of the house wakes. In the meantime, I decide to do a gentle lap of the room, my gaze on the window that separates me from the great outdoors. A bird is whistling softly, and although I recognise it as a frequent guest of my garden, I give it a stern stare and a gentle warning. She looks at me through wide beady eyes, then flaps her feathered wings and soars across the garden in a showy sort of way. She knows very well my desire to be among the wild right now, so her flips around the bushes are merely to taunt me.

There are socks on the floor, heaped in the corner where my dad threw them after dinner last night. They look damp and worn and have no place on the tiled floors. I give them a soft poke and then retreat from their mess to instead explore the empty box beside them.

Suddenly between the sounds of the birds, gentle wind and pokey noises characteristic of the house, there is a beautiful squeak of the bedroom floor and one solitary tender step on the staircase.

It is my mum!

My mum’s sleepy stepping coming down the stairs, the slow pause on the bottom platform that only she does.

Her face appears around the kitchen door and my excitement bubbles as I bound across the kitchen tiles and hurdle against the barrier. Her hands pat the fur on my head and her lips bend down to kiss me good morning.

Oh how I love the dawn, and how I love the moment my mum comes down.