So here we are– fully in Daylight Savings Time. I was keenly aware of it this evening, when it was suddenly Well Past Time to get the dinner on the table, but was still looking like late afternoon outside. I had forgotten until that moment how, at the beginning, DST always sneaks up on me, throws me off, and spoils my plans for an early morning walk.
Yes, the dawn that had been coming earlier and earlier is now no longer around much before seven a.m.– a fact that will, indeed, change with time. More and more light is on its way. I like that.
I actually love Daylight Savings Time. The late light means summer. It reminds me, even at its inception in April, of crickets and locusts singing in the heat, of lightning bugs rising from the lawn, of late-night games of Ghost in the Graveyard when the grass grew cool and damp under our feet and we played on long after shadows had disappeared and the embrace of the warm air meant we were safe somehow, even if the game went on long after dark.
But wait. Daylight Savings Time begins in April. In April. And this, last time I checked, was March. And early-March, at that. We couldn’t call this mid-March; we haven’t yet reached the middle. Not the middle. Not yet.
It was a few weeks ago that I learned of this change. “They are changing the length of DST,” I was told. “They are making it start about two weeks early, and it will continue about two weeks longer than it used to.”
Wait, I thought again. Wait. Nobody asked me about this. Nobody, so far as I knew, asked anybody. They just decided it. And with that, they changed, abruptly, completely, the way the light looks throughout the day. Just because they wanted to.
Oh, I understand, I do. The decrease in use of electricity, right? And that’s good. It is.
But somehow it doesn’t feel like a good thing to me. No. It reminds me, quite frankly, of the way I feel when I see the “back to school” signs in the shopping mall in the middle of June, or the Christmas displays in the grocery store in early September, or the ads for Valentines in the Hallmark store in the second week of January.
I want to anticipate summer; I do. But anticipation has a way, doesn’t it? of making us overlook the Right Now. And I’m fairly certain that there are some aspects of Right Now that I will one day wish to get back again. I look forward to summer, but I’m not in a hurry. I want to enjoy these days while they last and to not be, always and always, wishing it were Some Other Time than now.
Well, DST doesn’t change everything. We still have almost a full week left of our spring break, after all. And we still have a full quarter remaining for this first-ever school year. We still have a basement waiting (and waiting) for repairs; we are still in Lent; we are still only 10, and 8, and 6 years old. We have more daylight to enjoy, and it will last longer this year. We’re not really in a hurry after all.
Oh, wait. I forgot: William is 10 and a half.
