The Day Begins Here

The Day Begins Here

The quiet never lasts long here. It never does.

I hear it before I see him — the soft scuff of small feet on the passage floor, the pause outside the kitchen like someone deciding whether the day is allowed to begin yet. Leo appears in the doorway, hair flattened on one side, eyes only half open. He doesn’t say anything at first. He just looks at me, as if confirming I’m still here.

“You’re early,” I whisper, because it feels like the right thing to say.

He blinks slowly, considering this, then leans his head against my hip in a way that says the discussion is over. This is the morning now.

There was a time when being needed this soon would have felt like too much. When my body would already be tired before the day had properly arrived. Back then, mornings came with a low hum of dread, a sense that something unseen was already moving toward me.

There was a time when quiet felt dangerous. When silence meant something was about to go wrong, or that it already had and I simply hadn’t discovered it yet. My mornings began with a scan — of the house, of my phone, of my own chest — checking for damage.

I would wake before the alarm, heart already alert, already bracing. I learned how to read the dark by feel alone: the weight of the air, the way my thoughts arrived already dressed for disaster. I would reach for my phone before I was fully awake, thumb hovering, knowing there would be messages I didn’t want to read and reading them anyway.

One morning stands out, though there were many like it.

The house was still sleeping, wrapped in that fragile hour before dawn. I sat on the edge of the bed, feet cold against the floor, phone lighting my face in a pale, unforgiving glow. The message was short. Polite. Almost kind.

Good morning. Please confirm when the rent will reflect in my account.

That was all. No accusation. No anger. Just a question that landed like a weight. My chest tightened instantly, breath shallow, thoughts racing ahead of what I could afford, what I had failed to plan for, how long before worry turned into consequence. I stared at the words longer than necessary, as if they might rearrange themselves into something easier.

The house stayed quiet. The children slept on, unaware. And I sat there alone with a message that said very little and meant far too much.

Nothing ever announced itself clearly in those days. There was no single moment I could point to and say, this is where it broke. Just a long season of vigilance. Of listening for sounds that might mean something had shifted overnight. Of believing that peace, if it came at all, would arrive loudly enough to be undeniable.

Now, I just breathe.

Outside, the light shifts almost imperceptibly, as if someone has adjusted a dimmer switch in the sky. I notice how my shoulders are no longer hunched the way they once were. How my jaw is unclenched. How my mind isn’t sprinting ahead of the day, rehearsing every possible failure before breakfast.

I take my first sip of tea. It’s too hot. I don’t mind.

Back then, I asked God for strength in the dark, unsure whether I meant today or in general. My prayers were sharp-edged, urgent, shaped like survival. I wanted answers. I wanted guarantees. I wanted to know how long the holding pattern would last.

Somewhere along the way, faith changed its shape.

It didn’t arrive with solutions. It didn’t tidy up the loose ends or erase the numbers I still had to count carefully. Faith didn’t fix things. It steadied me. Like a hand at my back instead of a map in my hands.

I began to read the same verse each morning, not because it promised anything new, but because it didn’t. The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. I read it slowly, letting the words settle where panic used to live. Not as a declaration of abundance, but as a reminder that I was not walking alone through scarcity.

Faith stopped sounding like instructions and started sounding more like background music — steady, familiar, easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. Not something that interrupted my fear, but something that softened it. A presence that didn’t insist on being named, only noticed.

Now, I don’t ask for much at all.

I stand there with a mug cooling in my hands and a child steady at my side, and I feel it — not words, not answers — just a quiet sense of being held. A faith that doesn’t announce itself. A presence that doesn’t require explanation.

Soon, the house begins to stir in earnest.

Kayoma arrives first, already fully herself, hair wild, eyes bright. She peers into my mug with suspicion.

“Are you making coffee?” she asks, hopeful.

“Yes,” I say.

“Please remember extra sugar,” she adds quickly, serious as a contract. “Because you always make it not sweet enough.”

“I do not,” I protest, but she’s already smiling, unconvinced.

Tarquin follows more slowly, polite even in half-sleep. He stands a little straighter than necessary, like mornings deserve manners.

“How did you sleep?” he asks, genuinely interested.

“Better,” I tell him.

“Good,” he says, satisfied. Then, after a pause, “Could I please have some Milo?”

Of course he can. He always can.

I don’t need to look at them closely to know what they need. I know their rhythms the way I know my own heartbeat — Kayoma’s quick questions, Tarquin’s careful kindness, the way both of them trust that I will be here when the day begins.

And that is how I know this is where the day truly starts.

Not with fear.

Not with numbers.

But with presence.