5 things learned watching 5 days of sunrise

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Who sets their alarm at 4:50 a.m. every day on vacation? I do.

Some background: Every once in awhile, I drag myself out of bed at 5 a.m. to walk the neighborhood and watch the sun rise over South County. It’s not always pretty, but I’ve come to believe the morning is the best time of day – once I navigate the 29 steps it takes to get me from feet-hitting-floor to out-the-front-door.

Every day for a week, I walked over this boardwalk onto the beach of Corolla, N.C., and into a kaleidoscope.

So a story about watching the sun rise over Corolla, N.C., on the Outer Banks, at about the most Eastern point of the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. Not knowing when I would ever pass this way again, I made a promise to myself on vacation — a family reunion at a beachfront home to celebrate my Dad’s 80th birthday in the summer of 2014 — to get up while it was still dark.

The intent was to walk the beach, wait for the sun to break over the ocean’s horizon and see what the morning would bring. For five consecutive mornings from July 14-18, I watched a new day dawn over America.

Without coffee.

“That’s dangerous,” said my husband, Tom. “You want your family to know what you’re really like?”

“Are you crazy?” my sister-in-law Missy asked. “You’re on vacation!”

Indeed I was, but I’m old now — and menopausal, so sleep comes whenever it wants. And besides, there’s always the second greatest invention behind the glass of wine: the nap.

In those spectacular, early-morning hours on a beach in North Carolina, I learned a few things, among them:

Every sunrise, every day is different. Each day was like one of those kaleidoscopes you had as a kid, changing by minute not by my hands, but by God’s. Lesson learned: You think you’ve seen it all, but you haven’t.

Round and round she goes. We don’t feel the earth move beneath our feet, but it does. From the moment a glowing dot appeared on the ocean’s horizon, the movement of the sun was palpable as I literally watched it rise. Lesson learned: Don’t blink.

It all depends on your point of view. On Tuesday, a storm raged off the coast, what must have been a stormy ride for anyone sailing through it. Yet the sun still rose, and from where I stood its rays sprayed through the clouds like a silk hand fan. Lesson learned: Light always finds a way.

Rain? So what. The most vivid colors and most interesting images came the morning the Weather Channel claimed a washout. Lesson learned: More reliance on instinct, less worry about what computer radar says.

Each day is a fresh start. A sunrise promises each one of us a chance to start over, to begin anew. Each morning I walked up the boardwalk over the dunes back toward the house, knowing I’d be surrounded by the love of my family and Tom and my boys, and that was all that I needed.

That, and coffee.

It was among the best weeks of my life.

A version of this appeared in the Aug. 1, 2014 issue of the South County Times.