If you drive by my house early in the morning, you’ll likely see the lights on. Even as a young child, I was usually out of bed long before the sun came up, and over time, the habit stuck. During my elementary school days, my mom and dad worked outside the home, and as such, getting everyone in our family where they needed to be in the mornings often required creative coordination. My school was within walking distance of our house, blocks from the hospital where my mom worked as a nurse. So, each morning before her shift, my brother and I would wake up extra early and go to the hospital with her. There, we met up with the school-age children of other hospital workers and played tag in the empty waiting room. When it got close to the start of school, we kids donned jackets, grabbed backpacks, and walked to school together. Even for a kid growing up with 1970s freedom, it was an unconventional start to the school day, to be sure. 

My early mornings today are not nearly as interactive as they were back then. My friends are not up for a predawn game of tag, so I typically spend mornings by myself, sitting in a well-worn chair in the front room of my house, looking out over the dark street. My faithful dog Ruby usually curls up in the chair next to me, where we are only a few short feet from my equally faithful coffee maker. As far as places to start the day, it’s one of my favorite spots.

A close second is around eight miles east of my house in the DFW airport. The way I see it, the airport is a fabulous place to greet the day. When scheduled on a morning flight, I leave my house in the pitch darkness, driving along a blissfully quiet Southlake Boulevard and feeling very much like I am the only person in town awake. When I turn onto North Airfield Drive, tangible energy replaces the solitude. Cars stream along the curbs, dropping off and picking up, all while trying to keep pace with the steadily flowing traffic. TSA agents announce their ever-changing directives inside the glowing terminal, guiding sleepy-eyed travelers through security lines. And at every Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts counter, people quickly queue up for their caffeine fix. 

Watching the morning unfold in an airport is never dull. What captures my attention most, though, are all the things circling in the air around me: not so much the airplanes, but the stories. I’m always curious about peoples’ stories and what brings them to the airport at the exact moment I am. All of us are in the same space and time, each living out an individual, ongoing story.

I’ve had several airport experiences that I suspect made people around me wonder about my story. Not long ago, I was in line to talk to a ticket agent when I received a phone call notifying me that my grandmother had died unexpectedly. Tears spilled out as I approached the counter, leaving the ticket agent and the poor fellow behind me speechless. Another time, I was enjoying a visit with my friend, waiting at the gate after a weekend together. Lost in our conversation, we didn’t hear the boarding call. We missed that entire flight.

I have spent time in airports with my thoughts centered on once-in-a-lifetime vacations, nerve-wracking work events and heart-breaking funerals. Every time, my story unfolded in one way or another, side-by-side with the stories of the other travelers around me. 

Every day, when we wake up, early or not, our story begins anew. For some of you, your story may unfold in a relatively quiet season. For others, you are up and running full swing, playing your version of tag in a waiting room or jumping through hoops to get to a gate on time. Either way, the dawn of 2025 has begun for us all. And so, too, begins our stories for the year. We have no idea how our year’s narrative will end, but like we early birds already know, just being awake to witness the beginning of the day is an excellent place for any story to start.