For us early morning folk, the time change gives us back our mojo. No longer fumbling in the dark on waking. Now a rim of light glows around the edges of the shade.
I walk down to my office window to find a palette of color. The corals of sunrise and the oranges of autumn make dawns as rosy-fingered as Homer said they were.
I know what’s waiting around the corner. This light will not last. Mornings will grow dark again. But for the moment, I’m reveling in them.
Up early, I creep into my office, journal and book in hand. There is homework, committee work, a presentation, two papers. Plenty to do, in other words. But here, in this warm sanctuary, at this apple-green desk, all I want to do is look out the window at the dark sky.
Is that a star? A planet? Some quick googling tells me that it’s Mars, visible in the southern sky before dawn.
As long as I’m looking, I read about the Red Planet. Though its years are almost twice as long as ours, its days are almost exactly the same.
Here on Earth, the days are long but the years are short. On Mars, perhaps we could reverse that — or at least tweak it a bit.
(Photo of Mars courtesy Wikipedia.)
It’s been two decades since I left the full-time-freelance life and took an editorial job on a magazine staff. I’ve been thinking this morning of how decisions ripple outward into time and space, how they define us in ways we might never fully understand.
The job I took in October, 2004, was a creative boost. Suddenly, I was writing articles about theology and science and history. I felt like I’d gone back to school, and in a way I had. I was working for a university publication. I continued in that vein (though at another university) for a dozen years before joining a nonprofit development firm that sent me around the world to report on its projects.
Each job built on the one that came before. Had I not taken the first, I wouldn’t have taken the second, or the third.
Now, I’m a freelancer again, and I’m a student for real, with more deadlines. I’ve come full circle, back to a place that feels comfortable and right. But these other lives are all around me, in the friends I’ve made, the skills I’ve learned, the “material” I’ve stored. It’s good to have a day when I can reflect on the decisions themselves, on how they worked their magic, even when I thought they might not.
(Always trying to see the forest through the trees.)
I woke up this morning, glanced at my calendar, and found … nothing. Oh, there are a couple of errands to run, but there are no trips, excursions, parties or concerts. Nothing I absolutely have to do.
How lovely nothing can be. Because nothing is potential: a lazy afternoon in the hammock, an hour of weeding, or, what’s more likely, a few hours of reading and study. (Taking two classes this semester has me hopping!)
But right now, for this moment, nothing is exactly that. And I’m going to revel in it.
It took a poison ivy search to bring them to light, a careful combing of the backyard in preparation for a children’s party here this weekend. At first I didn’t know what they were, saw only the fallen petals, tiny blossoms in the grass.
Then I looked up, saw the bent boughs of the crepe myrtle shining in the sun. It’s my $2 tree, one of the stock I purchased from the Arbor Day Foundation years ago and planted without much hope. It’s 20 feet tall … and it’s blooming.
Vibrant pink flowers are weighing down the spindly top of the unpruned tree, blooming earlier than the other crepe myrtles in the yard, which are, unfortunately, planted in the shade.
But this little guy inherited the sun, grabbed the rays when the big oaks came down. He is reaping the harvest. We all are.
I’ve been waiting months to nab a library copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis. I’ve read most of Robinson’s fiction (incandescent!) and some of her nonfiction (always erudite and thought-provoking). In fact, she’s one of my favorite authors.
When I cracked open her latest, though, I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge. Nothing against Robinson, but Reading Genesis deserves a more clear-eyed reading than I can give it now. This is a book for cuddling with on a cold winter’s evening. It’s about concentrated mental effort, the kind I don’t have much of when days are long and nights are short and the mercury is topping 90 every day.
Feeling this way about the book makes me wonder about the seasonality of our reading choices. Might I have finished Ulysses if I’d attempted it in September, with the crisp attentiveness of a new academic year? After all, that’s when I finally completed The Power Broker.
On the other hand, it’s good to take the measure of a book before you start reading it, to save its revelations for another day. I’m sorry to pass on Genesis. But — at least for now — I will.
(Photo: Detail of Sistine Chapel ceiling, courtesy Wikipedia)
The walks come when they will, when I wake up and make my way to the beach. The tides have their own rhythms, drawn from moon and sun and gravity.
When I stroll the beach, I’m part of the elements, pulled into their orbit, at one with sand and sea.
Time passes slowly. Eternal time, at least for an hour or two.
Today at 4:51 p.m., the northern hemisphere of our planet officially enters its hottest season. It’s the earliest solstice in 228 years, they’re saying, since George Washington was president.
I’ve been thinking of George Washington lately, what with the discovery of 35 bottles of preserved cherries recently found at his home, Mount Vernon. Now I’ll think of him again, enjoying the longest day of the year, perhaps in Philadelphia, then the capital of these United States. A few months later, he will deliver his farewell address.
But back to the solstice, which is early this year because of leap year and our imperfect calendar. I could have waited one more day for it — savored the anticipation — but there’s no way to stop a celestial body when it has made up its mind.
And so I prepare to drain as much daylight and happiness from this day as I can. It’s the longest one; it can spare it.
(A favorite sunrise shot, the beach at Chincoteague, April 2016.)
It happened regularly and would have happened today, which is both Mother’s Day and Dad’s birthday. I would make the trip out to Kentucky then, figuring the confluence gave me two reasons to visit.
I always felt a bit bad for Dad on those days, worrying that the luster of his special day was dimmed a bit by having to share it with Mom. But Dad didn’t seem to mind.
Now I have so many reasons to revel in this day, which celebrates both my parents and on which I will see or hear from my own precious daughters and grandchildren.
It’s a confluence all right.
It’s Leap Day, a bonus, a gift, an intermittent reminder that we live in a universe with rules of its own. Yes, we can parcel our annual passage around the sun into 365 tidy intervals, but there will be hours left over, almost six of them. Adding an extra day every four years keeps our calendars in sync with the seasons.
This year I’ll experience fewer of these extra hours. Jet travel will erase them.
Still, it’s not a bad way to celebrate Leap Year: by leaping into the future, embarking on a journey, landing in a place I can scarcely imagine but will soon (I hope) see.
(Lisbon is our first port of call, but only to catch a connecting flight.)
