Sunday morning, here I woke, in that early fuzzy dim of predawn, here the world seems monochromatic, black and white, even. When you switch on the electric light and the room is washed in color. You close the door, forgetting to turn off the light, leaving a jamb of color around the door in the hall.

The house is still sleeping, mother and babe, still fast asleep in rooms upstairs. I am here in my new blue chair, sipping coffee, thinking through my fingers on a keyboard. Chester is lying on the floor, occasionally sighing. The cats, I hear them outside at the door. They'd like to come in, but we renegotiated their contract, and now they live outside. We may, as winter progresses let them back in, but only in the basement.

I hear a small cry from upstairs. Babe is waking. Sun is rising somewhere behind these Sunday rainy skies. I find her in her crib, squirming around. I gently turn her over; she yarns, stretches out her tiny arms and legs, looks up at me and smiles her toothless grin. I think she may be a morning person like her dad.

I picture us on some future Sunday morning, getting bundled up, boots and coats and hats and gloves, taking the dog with us on a early morning tromp through the fields, while mom gently brings her dream machine in for a landing.

I picture, too, a family breakfast. Messy kitchen, cooking bacon, frying eggs, dipping French toast, drenching maple syrup, short fat glasses of orange juice, buttery toast, and all of us singing dancing and laughing in our pajamas. Maybe this is Christmas morning, or just some Sunday full of love.

I think I am growing sentimental about the future. Maybe sentimental is not the right word. How about "dreamily anticipatory." Sure, I'll take that.

I am lucky—and thankful—that I get to enjoy this time now. Our joyful little baby with that beautiful face full of expression and light. You should see her eyes when she laughs. She will light up a room. She's the same but different everyday. She was perfect when she was born and she just keeps getting better.

Getting to know her has made me more accepting of people in general. I look at people now and think that they too were once this tiny, this helpless, this perfect. I also think about how people I see around me might be the parent of some beautiful child. Perhaps that jackass behind me with the high beams blinding me is really some sweet child's mom or dad.

Now I really am delusional. Perhaps all this sunshine has gone to my head.

But that's OK. I need it. I was nearing dangerously low levels of faith in other people. I was letting them get to me. I was spending my time dwelling on situations I had no control over, replaying scenarios in my head where I said this instead of that, where the outcome was different.

Oh the things you might have said instead.

Is it creative or destructive? Am I a writer or a complainer? Do I question or do whine? Am I picking knits where knits naught be picked? Am I a poet, a philosopher, an observer of human nature? Or am I some jackass with a bad attitude?

I know what I'd like the answers to be, so it's up to me to answer correctly. Diet and exercise, I suppose. What do I feed my head, how do I exercise my mind? Reading, listening, laughing, sharing, walking, talking and loving, among other things, will keep me in form.

Fatherhood gives you the chance to be better than the person you were. To go further than you would for yourself, because your sum is greater than your part now and you have to live up to it.

OK. Enough babbling for one morning. The sun is up somewhere. The sky here is grey and will be all day, no doubt. I hear mom and babe moving around upstairs, baby's breakfast must be over. The dog has gone from sighing to snoring. The cats have wandered off. And I am about to get up from my new blue chair.