We met before at 3am when I woke up completely confused as to why I was fully dressed. You see, Saturday night had enough of me and sent me to you at sometime after 8:30pm. I vaguely remember being totally exhausted and looking at the clock. I groaned when I realized it was only 8:30 or so, and I couldn’t quite justify going to sleep yet. Sometime after that, I decided to just close my eyes for a minute and woke up to you.

3am on you, I woke up, not in complete darkness as usual, but to the TV and lights on, candles still burning and shoes on my feet. My PlayStation controller and glasses had made their way under my pillow. I don’t normally sleep with shoes or glasses on. In fact, I typically hate shoes and remove them at the first opportunity. It doesn’t make sense that I have so many of them if I hate them, but humans are complex, unlike Sunday mornings.

Perhaps complex isn’t the right word. I shouldn’t have compared you to humans at all. We are not worthy of comparison. I didn’t mean to offend. You are incredibly complex and dependable, Sunday morning. The amount of energy shooting at us from the Sun millions of miles away, and the energy the Earth uses to spin around so that the Sun’s rays shine on me at roughly the same time nearly every day is astounding. The universe is cool.

I fell asleep without the aid of my sleeping pills, which is extremely rare. I need the placebo effect of sleeping pills. My brain needs to connect the dots from taking something to sleeping. Apparently, that doesn’t apply to “just closing my eyes for a minute,” which in this case, turned into five to seven hours of healthy, natural sleep by my reckoning.

It was a strange way to meet you, Sunday morning. I’ve met you many times before at 3am, but that’s because I hadn’t gone to bed yet. I rarely meet you by waking up at 3am. I don’t recall a time that I ever have. And even after I woke up at 3, you let me sleep a few more hours, when the Sun was already coming around.

Don’t tell the other days, but you are my favorite, Sunday, especially your mornings. The Sun is slowly drying out the condensation on the leaves and grass. It will be many hours until it makes its way around the Earth to my window, but you’ve still given me bright, indirect light. The birds and occasional cricket were chirping and my dog tried to chase a squirrel when I took her out for our walk. Those were the only creatures to be seen at 7am. There weren’t even any cars yet.

In a city as large and densely populated as Los Angeles, those precious few quiet sunlight hours are very rare and I savor them as I would an aged single malt bourbon. At 8am, cricket chirping has been replaced by the birds and the squirrels are still squirreling, but I can hear the occasional car out my window now. The humans are waking up and soon, they will ruin everything. It will be noisy. There will be voices and cars and the cacophony of a massive urban sprawl. The Sun cast its shadows differently than it did just an hour ago. It’s brighter and sunnier.

It’s always sad when I start hearing noises from my window since it means I no longer have you to myself, just me and the squirrels and the birds, but I guess it can’t be helped. Thank you for those quiet morning hours, Sunday morning.