Morning Routines

Never in my life would I have expected to glean parenting advice from Tom Ford. Yes, Tom Ford. The man who mastered how to sell sex for top couture brands such as Yves Saint Laurent. The man whose own brand features over-the-top glamorous, sun-kissed models knotted together along Ibiza rock cliffs.

Well, I’ll have you know that this very same Tom Ford gets up at 5:30am every day, works out for 30 minutes, takes a bath, gets dressed and then goes to wake up his son and start his morning with him. Turns out Tom Ford is about as regular a parent as all of us: searching for a way to ground himself before the world wakes up and he has to start negotiating which socks his son wants to wear to school. In his recent interview with the WSJ Magazine, the reader discovers that Tom Ford is just a regular dad—a single dad to be precise after his partner recently died—trying to navigate work and parenting: school drop off, commuting to his office, and getting a good night’s sleep.

Tom’s interview came at an opportune time; the day after, a dear old friend texted me from out West to ask,

“What is your morning routine?”

I answered,

“Get up, do some yoga, get dressed, have coffee and then do the morning routine with my family.”

But admittedly, I paused before hitting the send icon.

I added,

“That is the ideal. The reality is often quite different. LOL.”

Ah the love-hate relationship we all have with morning routines. Morning routines are primal. Take for instance meerkats. We’ve been following the Meerkat Manor series and each morning starts off the same. A good clean of the den, some grooming in the sun, a little playing then off to forage for the first meal of the day. Just like these little mammals, morning routines are important to us humans too: they provide grounding, order and consistency to our day.

Morning is by far the happiest time of day for me—the quiet and the solitude. Before child, I rose early and spent considerable time doing some form of exercise followed by reading morning papers, journalling and drinking coffee. Yoga in my little studio in Lubumbashi, FT Weekend on my balcony in Nairobi while listening to the birds, or rising to the sound of the prayer calls in Khartoum. Some of my fondest memories once arriving in DC involved a 7am bike commute to work through the north end of the While House to breathe in the majesty and power of the nation’s capital.

I’ve also always been curious about other people’s morning routines. I love that day-in-the-life interview you find in most major papers’ Weekend editions. For a few minutes I live inside someone else’s world, nestled in the warmth of a perfect Saturday morning replete with fresh coffee and croissants, breakfast with the family, jaunts through local gardens and possibly an art gallery visit.

Nowadays my morning routine offers me those precious 15 minutes when I can knock out part of a weekly newsletter, stretch the tight muscles from horse riding the day before, slink down for a quiet cup of coffee and perhaps get in one newspaper article. It does not feel as luxurious as it used to. But it is still a sliver of my day that is all mine.

COVID-19 threw many things out of the window but the one thing I’ve tried to retain control over is my morning routine. Admittedly, I’ve really struggled with working from home and keeping a morning routine during the pandemic. But be that as may I’ve tried my level best to keep at the art of perfecting it. Because not only do morning routines provide some joy, they are also important to maintaining mental balance. Indeed, as parents, we all know that a big success factor in managing careers and parenthood lies in carving out time to get ourselves on track before our children rise.

In re-reading the Hear Our Voices interviews I did this year, fellow parents evoked the idea of a good morning routine as sacrosanct. For many it involves:

-Some ritual around a hot beverage (hot water with lemon, tea or coffee)
-A quiet moment to yourself (journalling, reading)
-A little movement (exercise, stretching)
-Contemplation of some sort (meditation or simply silence)

Dani Shapiro has an entirely different take on the morning routine. At a writers' workshop of hers I attended years ago at Kripalu,, she had a very realistic grasp on her capacity to nail an early morning routine. She didn’t strive to get up early; rather when she walked back through the door after her son's school drop off, she pretended like her day was just beginning: coffee, yoga and meditation. A refreshing interpretation for those of us who might not succeed in rising early.

As I look to the new year, that faux time of the year when we aim to hit “reset” on many things we didn’t master the year before, I am looking to my morning routine. And Tom Ford reminded me that morning routines (at least early ones which as parents we may crave) hinges on …you guessed it…the night before. Less wine and late night eating, and lights out real early. Will I get it right all the time? Probably not. But the beauty is in the art of perfecting it.

As I wrote in the Little A to Z, our routines with child and with ourselves shift so dramatically in those first years of child rearing. Yet we still hold dear to the ritual —that magical time of the morning when the birds are waking up, the sun casts dramatic rays through our bedroom windows, when the streets are so quiet you can hear your thoughts in conversation with yourself. Whether it is drinking coffee out of that mug you’ve had since your days in college or strapping on those shoes and breathing in fresh air, let us raise a new year’s toast to morning routines. That we shall endeavor to hold them dear and excel at them with the same zeal as those little meerkats in the Kalahari desert. Of if you prefer, as seductively as Tom Ford.