Time Again

You can tell me the truth, kiddoes---you hate this night.  You know:  Fall Back.  It doesn't matter to most people that we gain an extra blessed hour of sleep tonight.  It's giving up an hour of precious daylight at the end of every day for the next four months that puts so many in ill humor.  I'll confess; I love it---it suits the dark side of my nature.  I was actually mad when they pushed it back until after the first of November a couple of years ago.  But I know you're (mostly) sane out there, not given to late nights and sad songs like me.  For you on the sunny side, let me give you a few reasons to like the evening a little better this season.

First, you have a good reason to settle in at home with your people a little earlier, to enjoy evenings over a family dinner (nearly unheard of these days, and so strange to me---we grew up eating all our meals together).  There's actually time after dinner to sit down and watch a movie or play games together, even on a weeknight.  You could even bring back family reading, sharing a big book that you read to your kids or they read with you.  I've been reading all my life, but one of the most enjoyable experiences I had as an 11-year-old was when Vonnie Robbins read Treasure Island to her daughters and me over several evenings one summer.  You think your kids won't appreciate it?  They might not, not today, anyway.  Soon, yes.  Soon, a once-a-week family evening will become a part of their own family fabric, and you've started to reshape the broken landscape of what made our lives seem so much better when we were kids.  What a gift to give our children! 

What do you do with those dark hours if you have no kids at home?  Turn off the TV and talk to your "other."  Ask the kinds of questions that can lead a discussion in a million different directions.  Better yet, do a little project or take a class together that keeps the brain active and the heart open.  It doesn't really matter, as long as you're spending the time together.  Why is this so hard for so many couples anymore?  Ah---it's all those daylight hours when everyone gets out to do things in the evening time that families used to spend together---games, shopping parties, drinking, whatever-it-is that people get up to, then wonder why their relationships fall apart.  Well, here it is:  the four month challenge to save your marriage.  Not that I know a damn thing about marriage, but common sense says, if you spend those evenings together this winter learning more about yourselves together, instead of chasing your own interests all-l-l the time, you're more likely to fall together than fall apart.

I can only really speak knowledgeably about family time and alone time.  As a single person living alone, far from hating more evening in the winter, I love it.  It does make it a little harder to get around in the evening after the gym and drive home from Pryor to BA, but that's a small price to pay for the extra-relaxed time when I get there.  Instead of rushing around feeling like I've got to beat the sunset to get things done, that moment has passed before I even get out of the pool.  I can get home, eat a quick dinner, and be hunkered down for a little reading or TV and therefore ready to sleep when it's bedtime.  I have a hard time winding down most longer days, but not so much this time of year.  Even better, on the nights I don't go to class, I have a long evening for reading or movie watching or researching/playing on the computer.  If I go out to meet friends for dinner, most of us are comfortable to relax for a good visit---no one rushing to get home and work in the yard or finish up some project.  There's NO time that I have trouble filling; even when we were snowed in for two weeks in the 2011 blizzard, I was perfectly content at home alone.  It's always completely mystified me how people can get bored.  There is SO MUCH to read, to learn, to see, and the computer is the window into anyplace or anything we want to get to anymore. 

What I love best about early evenings in the winter is a weekend, preferably cloudy, cold, and windy, when I can cook something all day in the crock pot while I grade papers, and about dark, pack things up for the day, and maybe do a little writing, journaling or otherwise, that will lead me into something new---a new idea for school, a memory I want to record that I'd forgotten, a fresh poetic phrase to save up for inspiration down the line. 

Probably you won't be inspired by the darkness the same way I am, but there are good things to be gained from these longer, colder evenings in front of the fire or under a lap quilt.  Put your shoulders back and breathe deeply, letting it settle you, if only for a while.  If it doesn't sit well, remember that it's only four short months until you can play beat the clock every evening again, squeezing out every ounce of sweetness from that evening sun.