The quiet of dawn speaks volumes

In Roman mythology, Aurora, the goddess of dawn, soars across the early sky in a robe of pink and gold to announce the arrival of the sun. Her colors are cast along the rim of the horizon, reflecting the eastern morning over the western ocean. A silver sheen glistens on the waves in the new light of a coming day, and the world trembles awake.

The Greeks called her Eos and worshiped her as the mother of the evening star, Eosphorus. By any name she brings tranquillity to the hesitant moment between night and morning -- an affirmation of renewal, a second chance for a new decision, a time not to be afraid anymore.

I don’t always think in these esoteric terms, but leaving the house at the magical moment between dark and light is an almost mystical experience. It was necessitated by the need to get Cinelli to St. John’s Hospital for early morning surgery on her knee. It was not a critical procedure but it had to be done, and now was the time.

She takes these phases in the aging of the body with an equanimity of spirit that defies the pulses of time through our lives. It is an adventure to her, and she loves adventures. I saw her enthusiasm in Africa, China and Russia; while others of our age faded, she marched on, called by the wonder of places she had never experienced.

A thin darkness still prevailed as we wound down out of Topanga Canyon. It was sometime around 6 a.m. But for the crows singing of summer’s end, cawing from the tips of the oak trees, wheeling through the rain-scrubbed sky, a hush lay across the land. There was an autumn chill to the morning, belying the heat of the day that would soon weigh heavily upon the Valley, the downtown, the Westside and all the neighborhoods of the east and the south of our sprawling megalopolis. But meanwhile, before the light, before the traffic, before the calamity of a city coming awake, we had the cool, still dawn to ourselves.

I am unaccustomed to rising in darkness. The years are gone when the need to be up and out required crawling awake to the insistent jangle of a pre-dawn alarm clock. There was a tiresome repetition to the routine, and I never have liked a requirement that drums in the same beat day after day. But because I haven’t done it for a while, this dawn offered a different perspective.

I could appreciate what James Fenimore Cooper called “the winning softness that brings and shuts the day,” reveling in a serenity seldom experienced. As I drove, I was particularly aware of the stillness and of those who shared the early morning with me. I saw lights go on in the hillside homes that faced the ocean. I saw a single car come down Sunset Boulevard on a street usually choked with traffic. I saw a homeless man riding a rickety old bike along PCH and another rising from sleep in Palisades Park.

An early morning scene that intrigued me most was the lone figure of a very old woman pushing a shopping cart down 14th Street toward Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. She walked in a gait that was almost slow motion, bent forward by both the burden of her years and by the necessity to push the cart ahead of her, a task that required all that she had to give.

One wondered at her destination: an all-night market? A 24-hour pharmacy? Or was she driven by a deep need to be a part of the dwindling hours that remained in her life? A dog trotted at her side, but I couldn’t tell whether it was hers or just a pooch let out from one of the nearby homes for his morning stroll. The dog seemed as old as the woman, and it was only right that they should waltz together through the encompassing dawn.

Now the pink that trailed across the horizon from Aurora’s flowing gown was giving way to the hesitant day; the sky melted into a pale blue as darkness receded into the gathering light. By the time we reached St. John’s, the bustle of traffic had begun and the quickening tempo of the city had intruded upon the tranquillity.

I told myself as the dawn eased away that I would do this again. I would rise early at the moment before movement and absorb the stillness. I would do it again soon.

I took Cinelli home from the hospital a few hours later. Her knee was bandaged, but she was free of pain and ready to lead a parade down the street and over the hills and through the turmoil, head thrown back, baton twirling through the air, a majorette on the way to another day.

I drove home dreaming of the morning and wondering how I could put it into words.

almtz13@aol.com