I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for a super busy week and very grateful for a chance to recharge. I’m grateful for wifi on navy ships. I’m grateful for seeing what can be. I’m grateful for finally seeing what was. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
I’m just going to say that I had a very hard time selecting a song of the week. Part of the blame goes to a very, very hectic week, which can prevent the proper sloshing around of silly ideas and odd memories that result in this on a weekly basis. Anyway, I spared everyone the 19-minute Egyptian palace-themed music video, which features surprisingly little music.
This is very much a DC song for me. Even when I listen to it now, I can be transported to any of a zillion days between 2011 and 2018 when I was walking to or from my favorite haunts on what I called the “P Street Corridor,” tucked between the Logan Circle and DuPont Circle neighborhoods. There was my main and favorite spot, Logan Tavern, a very basic, very good dive bar called “Stoney’s” and my least favorite of this alcoholic trifecta, “The Commissary.” Logan Tavern and The Commissary were owned by the same people, yet the difference in the food quality was pretty significant. I think part of the reason I really dislike The Commissary is because that’s where I did my morning drinking.
When I think about all of the terrible, dispiriting stuff that happened during that time, it was falling into the routine of morning drinking that was maybe the most soul-killing. Waking up with raging withdrawal symptoms, pulling on clothes and doing a very cursory brush of the teeth and hair and then I was out the door and headed to The Commissary. They opened at 8am and I was usually there around 7:55am most weekdays.1
I’d order my little carafe of sauvignon blanc, chat semi-amiably with the odd political consultant who was often my bar mate on these mornings and matched my glasses of wine with Bloody Marys, yet proclaimed most mornings that he was not an alcoholic, nor did he have a problem, he just liked to drink in the mornings.
I hated it.
Every one of those mornings felt like abject defeat to me. I like to make distinctions between my flavor of alcoholism and the folks who drink perfume, but there I was gulping down sauvignon blanc with my pancakes. I was probably at my most sober during these breakfasts, I’d been abstaining from alcohol for maybe 8-10 hours at that point. Maybe part of the reason I hated those mornings so much was that I was acutely aware of how I was wasting my life, I hadn’t gotten to the magical third stop on the Kim Crawford train, where none of that mattered anymore.
I know the official phrase of AA is “One Day at a Time,” but I think I got sober one morning at a time. Before and after my descent, mornings were a time of excitement and renewal and maybe the time I felt most myself. I’ve never been a good sleeper, I’ve been plagued with insomnia, racing thoughts and an inability to get the hamsters off the f***ing wheel since I was about ten. Mornings felt like a reprieve from the tossing and turning, the anxiety, ruminations and self-remonstrations that marked my Sixth Grade nights.
When I got my Des Moines Register paper route, I not only had a reprieve from my sleepless bed jail, but I got to go outside by myself in the pre-dawn light and best of all, put some cash in a certain pre-adolescent pocket. I loved those mornings because of how I felt: capable, independent, brave (I was 10), kind of bad-ass, to be honest.2 When I think back to those early, dark mornings, me carrying the 36 newspapers that comprised my weekday route, humming to myself as I sloshed through the dewy grass, leaving the cuffs of my jeans sodden and heavy against my ankles.
Those mornings at The Commissary were about as far from that as you could get.
When I moved to New York in 2020, with about a year of white-knuckle sobriety in my wake, and a very, very uncertain set of future prospects. I didn’t really know many people here, it was the pandemic, so that made for even more isolation. Those first mornings, trying to discern my future from the inky black that engulfed me, were pretty terrifying. I felt completely rudderless and alone. I was estranged from most of the people who had formerly cared for me and thought that if something happened to me, it would be quite a while before anyone found out, much less missed me.
Those dark mornings didn’t just feel dark, they were lonely, demoralizing and frightening. Those dark mornings were devoid not just of light, but of hope. Into this dark abyss, my sponsor made the “suggestion” that I try a daily gratitude list, and you know that tired story by now. To cut to the chase: I finally got sober.
One gratitude list at a time, one morning at a time.
Even during a super busy week, where I’m juggling pretty much everything and even compiling the to-do list is a significant effort, my mornings are completely different. I wake up with no alarm most days around 5:30, sometimes earlier, and from the moment my eyes open I’m aware of something, something I didn’t have in the olden days:
The feeling that things are okay.
I don’t necessarily leap out of bed singing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.”3 I don’t need to. I wake up in a place I love, with views of the beautiful city I now call home. As I pad down the hall to the kitchen to begin the sacred coffee rituals, I feel content and happy and calm. Nothing stupendous is happening or is scheduled to happen. I just finally found a way of living that produces peace and love and calm in place of chaos and fear.
I sit in the dark and drink coffee and think about where I am and how lucky I am to be here. I think about where I had to go, where I took other people, and let the feelings of regret and shame dissipate in the growing morning light. I feel optimistic in the mornings, I feel capable and strong in the mornings. I feel most open to possibility in the morning. I feel most myself in the morning.
I was very happy to see an old friend the other morning.
I was drinking coffee the other morning, aimlessly looking out the window and there was the Red-Tailed Hawk again. He flew right past my window and took up a very brief perch. Do you want to know where?
On the Pirate Balcony, of course.
I was trying to get a picture of him, beautiful, strong, nearly full-grown, perched on the railing directly above the camp chair that is the seating option on the Pirate Balcony. But as soon as I came around the corner, he was off in a graceful arc headed towards 88th street. I don’t know if it was just a nostalgia-based trip to the old stomping grounds, or whether he’s been here all winter. It was just good to see that he’d made it another year. I realized I’d made it another year, too.
It’s funny to read that post, I was about to embark on the great adventure that was 2024 and as I sit here in early 2025, I’m mostly just grateful for another year, for growing stronger, for living the life I was meant to live, being the person I was supposed to be, and letting this beautiful world spin around me.
It’s possible that was my last chance last sighting of the hawk. He’s building a life mostly out of my view and at some point he’ll probably secure his own territory somewhere else. I don’t think the hawk spends very much time thinking about me, maybe there’s a memory of feeling the sun on his wings on the pirate balcony but that’s probably about it, as far as connection goes.
It’s just seeing the hawk turn those lazy circles in the sky, knowing that he’s biding his time, living just as he’s supposed to and waiting for what will eventually unfold in front of him that gives me a sense of optimism about my own life. To be honest, there is very, very little certainty in my life and my future is very, very much unwritten. I supposed I could feel afraid, on my own and building a new life in my 60s. But I see the hawk making his way in his own way and I realize there’s so much beauty in that.
I realize that’s what I get to do, too.
Mornings are a gift, that’s really how I feel. It’s my chance to quietly revel in the life I’ve built, in the life I’m building. It’s where I feel the ease and strength that comes with just being oneself. It’s on those quiet dark mornings that I realize I’m exactly where I need to be and things are unfolding just as they will, moment-to-moment.
I have a feeling I’m not going to see the hawk again. That’s okay. It means he’s going on to bigger and better things, the things that are meant for him. Watching him fly away, I realized the very same thing was true for me.
Happy Friday
There were many more options on the weekends owing to brunch schedules.
Maybe you don’t think of newspaper carriers as “bad-ass,” but have you seen the official Des Moines Register bag we got to carry?
My younger brother very much liked listening to the “Oklahoma” soundtrack and very much enjoyed singing that song at the top of his lungs in the mornings. They say older brothers can be cruel, I think we just do what is necessary.