The cough that used to wake you

You had a routine you never chose and never named. Feet on the floor, then the bathroom, then a few minutes of getting the night out of your chest with the tap running so nobody had to hear it. Some mornings it was quick. Some mornings it was the loudest thing in the house. And then it was done, and the day could start, and you never counted those minutes as part of anything, because it was simply what mornings were.

Listen to those same ten minutes now. Nothing happens in them. You wake up, and you get up, and the day starts on the first try. There is no clearing, no bracing, no running water to cover a sound. It is such an ordinary quiet that it slides past you completely unless someone points at it. So consider this the pointing. The most improved part of your morning is the part where your body has nothing to say.

That cough was not a flaw in you. It was manual labor. All night your lungs collect what needs to leave, and normally they move it out quietly while you sleep. Under years of smoking the quiet system was offline, so the work piled up and had to be done by force at seven in the morning, by you, loudly, with both hands on the sink. You were doing your own housekeeping. Now the house cleans itself and you get to sleep through it.

Tomorrow morning, before the phone, give it thirty seconds. Just listen to yourself wake up. Hear the nothing. That silence is not luck and it is not nothing at all: it is a body that was being asked to start every day in damage control and is now allowed to start it the ordinary way. Thank God for a quiet morning, which is the kind of gift you only recognize once you have lived without it. Then get on with your day, first try.