Once Upon a Morning: Questions and Tea

My husband will be the first to tell you: mornings and I don’t exactly get along.

And he’s not wrong—at least not anymore. These days, mornings are slow to grow on me. I need time (and coffee) before I’m fully functional. But if you go back far enough—before the school drop-offs and alarms set too early, before motherhood and adulthood reshaped my rhythms—I was absolutely a morning person.

I was the kind of child who woke before the sun. Back then, mornings were my favorite part of the day. I’d pad into the kitchen while the world still felt hushed, and help my dad make breakfast—nothing fancy, simple things: tea, bread, butter. Always tea. In our house, in our corner of a former British colony, tea wasn’t just a drink; it was the start of everything.

On school breaks, when my siblings were home from boarding school, they’d grumble about my early-morning enthusiasm. I’d sing at the top of my lungs and chatter endlessly, forgetting that not everyone saw sunrise as an invitation. I asked way too many questions before breakfast. But I couldn’t help it—mornings lit something up in me.

Some of my deepest questions were born in those quiet hours. I remember asking my dad—and maybe asking God too—“If God created us, who created God?” Another time, I wondered aloud whether the soul had weight. Could you touch it? Did it have edges?

And my dad—patient and unshaken—never shushed me, never brushed me off. He’d sip his tea, nod thoughtfully, and meet me right where I was, engaging with a kind of patient wonder I still admire. He answered with calm curiosity, as if he, too, was still figuring it out.

Maybe that’s why, even now, I’m still chasing those kinds of mornings—not necessarily the hour on the clock, but the feeling. The openness. The questions. The quiet world just beginning to stir. It takes more than sunrise to get me going. But sometimes, I catch a flicker of that girl I used to be. The one who sang too loud. The one who believed mornings were for wonder.

And maybe, deep down, she still does.

– The Wallflower