It’s Christmas in the dawning hours in Los Angeles. Anyone who has known me a while knows that I’m an early riser. Today was no exception, except the clock’s first digit was six instead of five.

One of the things I do most mornings is walk. At the hour I walk in the day has not yet dawned and it is dark and cool with the kind of hush that precedes a city’s rush hour. This morning I went walking right as the sun was starting to rise. When I started the night was black but as I continued my walk I started to see purple and pink in the east as the sun began to show its face for Christmas morning.

It was a beautiful sight. A few stars still shone overhead, peeking through the cirrus clouds. There was one plane high up in the distance, heading west. Hawaii, perhaps, or even further. As I continued to walk the purple and pink strengthened as the night lost its grip on the sky and it began to show blue. It was a perfect time to walk and an amazing way to begin my day.

I could have chosen to see the negative as I walked. People often think that the street is a trash can and today was no exception. Drinking cups, their lids smashed, are common. There were beer bottles here and there, among other trash. It’s easy to wonder what people are thinking—will their discarded cups magically leap into trash cans? It would have been easy to think of those things today, but I chose not to. Let that sort of thought be for another day, when I have a bag with me to aid in the cleanup efforts.

Today I looked to the sky and marveled at the beauty of the dawning sunrise. I wondered what stars they were that clung on even as the sun gained headway into the day. They looked like ordinary stars and not planets but today they weren’t ordinary. They were part of this marvelous experience that started this Christmas day right. As I looked up I was reminded of the quote from “An Affair to Remember” when Deborah Kerr says “I was looking up—it was the nearest thing to heaven.” I’m not much for hyperbole but today that seemed to fit.

I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful holiday.

Claire