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I used to hate mornings. When I was young it meant getting out of bed early in the morning, running down for breakfast, dressing fast, grabbing my books and running out the door to begin the long walk to school. My memories then of morning was something cold and hard.

When I was in college, it meant getting up and feeling groggy after staying up all night to do my homework, throwing my clothes on and sleepwalking to the dining hall, eating hot porridge with peanut butter and bad tasting coffee and finally facing my first class with half-opened eyes and bad breath.

When I was a volunteer at a kibbutz in Israel, getting up in the morning meant getting up at 4:00 a.m. to start to pick apples. It was wonderous. All of us volunteers in our crappy work clothes piled into the dining hall, grabbed a cup of sweetened "Turkish" coffee, sat in the wagon tied to the tractor, half-a-sleep and rode out to the orchards quietly as the sun began to rise. We silently picked the apples until the sun was completely up, around 8:00 a.m. and rode the wagon back to the dining hall for a communal breakfast.

My husband is a morning person. He used to wake up at 5:00 a.m., and then he would come and hug me. I couldn't go back to sleep. His eyes would be wide open and full of such cheer. "Do you have to be so happy?" I would complain.

When I had children, I had to wake them up in the morning. I would yell to them the way my mother yelled to me when I was young, "Rise and shine, little ones", and sometimes I would sing about cows getting up in the morning. "Oh, Mom," they would complain as I pushed them to get up, eat their breakfast, wash up, get dressed and leave the house for school.

My kids have grown. My husband is not so cheerful anymore in the morning. But truly morning is the best time. My husband and I get up just as the sun is rising, we put on our sneakers and take our early morning walk. We walk past the small stream running through our neighborhood. The birds are chirping. There are crows, finches and torquoise King Fishers. Sometimes a woodpecker will mistakenly peck on a phone pole instead of a tree, or we will watch the coots coming out of the water, and I will always say, "what cute ducks", and my husband will always remind me they are coots and not ducks. Sometimes, in the season between winter and spring, we will see a flock of egrets in the sky, sometimes if we are really lucky, pelicans. We may even run into other walkers like ourselves and tell them good morning.

While watching the clouds and the sun rising and the sky turning from black to grey to blue we sometimes tell each other what we dreamt about the other night, or we will discuss a problem at work. Sometimes, if we have the energy, a heated discussion will follow about one of our children.

At last, when the morning walk is done, my husband will spoil me and make me the coffee only he knows how to make. He heats up my cup, then makes the coffee, and adds a lot of milk, just the way I like it. I embrace that little cup knowing this is the best time of the day and as I watch the news I try to make that first cup of coffee last, because after that, it is running, and noise, and cars and people and unpeaceful events out of my control.

The early morning can always be trusted to offer fresh air, quiet and the promise of a new day. What follows after that is unpredictable, not quite as fresh and certainly not as quiet. As I get older, I imagine I will be getting up even earlier and savoring the unpainted canvas of the day while others will be rushing around and cursing the morning sun.

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