It’s that time of year again, the moment when I realize a full turn has come and gone and another year is in the books. Not December 31st, Auld Lang Syne, ‘Happy New Year,’ and all that. Rather, June 20th, Summer Solstice, ‘Happy Summer’ and ‘Nice to see you!’
For once, I’m prepared.
Every year it seems the run up to full daylight happens briskly, arriving with suddenness and a resounding reminder of time’s merciless pace. And yet this year, a gift, in the awful packaging of a pandemic: a chance to meet the solstice with a measured awareness of the greater blessings we’ve been given as residents of Earth.
Think back for a moment. It was just about the Spring Equinox that we began to realize what lay ahead in the Covid era. Most of us had just begun to shelter in place as a first uniform response to contain the virus. Changes were abrupt and dispiriting. They were an interruption to our normal ways of life, and they came with discouraging realizations that, in fact, we’re not always in charge of our personal destinies as we so often believe we are.
Since then, the balance of daylight has slowly run towards longer days and less darkness. And alongside, the awkward and unbalanced days of March and April spent reconciling our lives in situ have given way to a mild harmony of discovery and rediscovery. New knowledge of how we can bridge social gaps amidst distancing and a renewed understanding of the merits of slowing down have brought a light of their own. The deliberate pace of life run almost exclusively from home, in rare serendipity, has coalesced with the deliberate advance of late Spring days in a way that’s allowed Earth’s turn to be felt and not forgotten.
Have you felt it? Have you been able to linger outside without concern for how you might relocate yourself or others with due haste? Perhaps you’ve been able to notice the subtle changes in light quality from day to day; or reflected on the value of shade in a high sky, or the value of sunlight in an evening awash with golden hues. For all the darkness that has come since early March, the quantity of daylight has only increased. And thank goodness! Sometimes just seeing the light of day is enough to keep you going. Often, and I hope in particular now, it reveals the common basis we all share for the turns our lives take.
DJ