Also? Time Changes Are Dumb.
A beautiful Costa Rican sunset. Photograph by my daughter, who is off working with sea turtles. Her photos make me happy. Also, she did not have a dumb time change!
I am not a fan of this time change, the one that set the clocks back an hour last Sunday.
It’s nearly dark by 5:00 pm here now (when it was 6:00 pm last week!). This darkness continues to descend earlier and earlier, day by day, for more than a month. I don’t know exactly when sunset comes earliest in December, but it’s around 4:40 pm here. Really! But then? Magically, mystically, wonderfully: the light slowly, slowly returns.
I need to remember these days that the light always comes back. Because I am now in this empty nest period, which should not have been a surprise. I’ve known it was coming for decades, that someday my kids would move along. But still! One day they were here. The next they were gone. My son has been away at college for more than a month, my daughter at her internship for two weeks. Some days, I wake up and wonder what all the fuss about the empty nest was, why everyone was warning me about it. Because it’s not all the way terrible. I haven’t minded not having to wake up with my son to make sure he gets breakfast and to school on time. I like not having to buy so many groceries. If my first work appointments are at 10:00 am, it’s nice not to have to leave the house until 9:00. These moments of “Hey! This empty nest is not so bad!” are generally in the mornings.
But then it’s evening, and it’s dark by late afternoon, and it’s just me and the cat and the dog and the spider that is still living above my kitchen sink in the house. I could work on my book. I should work on my book. I want to work on my book! But instead I somehow get sucked into watching twenty minutes of Instagram reels. Good for me, though, that it was only twenty minutes. Could have been longer. Maybe I’m glad that my phone was about to run out of battery.
For the first time in decades, I am living alone. Thankfully, I have a good job. I have friends. I have a home that I love. I have a wonderful community through Mercy Center. I have a book I’m trying to finish and then self-publish. It’s not like I’m alone. It’s not like I don’t have plenty to do. So what is this strange sadness that arrives after the sun sets, a kind of depression that makes me want to scroll endlessly through Instagram? So many spiritual teachers and mystics promise that God comes to us in silence. If I have any sense at all, I would purposefully dive deeper into the darkness. My house is pretty quiet these days. Seems like a perfect time to see what the dark holds. Because I suspect that this darkness could actually be some sort of invitation.
2 Comments
it makes me happy to hear you mentioning the spider over the sink as one of your companions. Please say hi from me. One of the good things about being an empty nester is that you have a chance to pursue things that you never had time for before. But even better than that, you can do it at your own pace — there is no rush, no deadline. It’s just an exploratory journey to search out those things that fulfill you. It’s such a gift. Not to mention, you get to hang out more with your friends like myself, which I think of as a definite perk, lol. Sending you sunshine in the darkness, my friend. Now go explore it!
Thank you Robin, a lovely blog. Perhaps it helps to think of the family members living wonderfully parallel lives. Each of you are involved in creative pursuits, and a web of family love still connects you as you embrace those zones. You, my friend, are instrumental in creating that zone. Enjoy those magical hours as you edit your book.