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Time was in my life when the dawn happened to otherpeople. I was definitely not a morning person; I associated the sunrise withlong plane flights across many time zones and groggy strolls around strangecities waiting for my hotel room to become available. Then I had children, andthe first light took on new meaning. Sometimes it was the sigh at the end of afretful night up with a feverish baby; or the opposite, the joyous cry of anexuberant 3-year-old eager to get the day going. It was only later, whenmornings were taken over by the getting-to-school frenzy, that I discovered theserenity of the surprisingly fast transition from night to day. For the smallprice of 15 minutes of sleep I could buy 15 minutes ofsolitary peace- with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Given thetidbit of time at my disposal, I developed the habit of skimming the paper,which quickly came down to a surreptitious and almost superstitious ritual ofchecking out the obituaries.

The message that comes through over and over is thatalthough there are times in any life when things seem to be proceeding step bylogical step, the whole is mostly random and askew. Life, as every biographyand obit I have ever read confirms, is what happens when you are making otherplans.