The morning before the morning when the clocks go back

 

Saturday, November 02, 2013

 

It is the morning before the morning when the clocks go back – that one day when it is possible to relive what was lost, only to lose it later in the spring when things spring ahead.

I go back in time reluctantly.

I am not one of those people who looks back and wishes I could do something over that I did wrong the first time (not an unusual event), learning to live with the consequences of what I do on the first go round.

Yet on this day, this moment when we become master of time for an hour, I relive things I wish I could relive exactly as they were, even when they seem painful when first lived, not to change them, but to examine them more closely, to take each moment apart tick by tick to see how it ticked in the first place, to understand more fully what I could not possibly have understood when I was in the midst of it.

This is the day for that, when I know that I will relive on hour out of this year, and will be able to treasure it and polish it like some precious jewel, a gift from the gods, who have bestowed upon me an hour of reflection, even if it is the hour before the dawn in which they come to collect Christ, or that moment before the world ends and I get to breathe the free air for one hour more before all falls in.

It is still dark out now. Tomorrow it will not be at this hour. And later after the dawn when the sun rises, the day will seem older because of the slanted light of the sun and the later hour I have used up already, worn out, sad light that casts everything into a deeper glow that will bring on twilight too soon.

There is always a price for receiving gods’ gifts, in this case months of this sadder sun, a penalty for man’s messing with time.

So that now, on this morning before the morning the clocks turn back, I must appreciate this gift, and accept it, knowing that the world will not return to its normal spin until this hour is recaptured, and instead of living in the past for an hour, I must leap ahead and lose another hour later – and always wonder what I might have done in that hour in spring, and if it is worth keeping this hour now at the expense of that hour.

But I never know.