The fall equinox will occur at 1:19 p.m. CDT today. For the next six months we will have more nighttime than daylight as we enjoy a lovely autumn and the bitter cold of winter, and the spring equinox will arrive at 9:46 a.m. March 20.
“Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain,” said the poet Richard M. Nixon. And only if you have lived through the coldest winter day, can you ever know how magnificent it is to sit around a fire with friends on a warm summer night watching the stars dance.
And so we celebrate the four seasons, even if the only nice thing I can say about winter is how pleasant it makes the other three seasons feel. OK, and winter starts with Christmas and New Year’s, so there’s that.
And after the winter solstice the days stop getting shorter and slowly, but surely, we work our way back to the point where we have more daylight than darkness for six months. So there’s three nice things to say about winter.
Why are these thoughts accompanied by a photo of Mary and me smiling with a wildflower plucked from my backyard? A friend sent me a Facebook message Sunday morning: “…Where’s Mary?” It seems I had been posting happy pictures of the two of us for many weeks and suddenly stopped.
I felt compelled to grab a quick selfie to assure my friend, and any others who wondered, that we are still sharing time with each other, still smiling together, still grateful for the God of the universe for arranging for our paths to cross, and still sending mushy messages to each other several times a day.
I was blessed to share nearly 26 years with a remarkable woman and partner whom I will always love dearly — the summer of my life, as it were. I continue to be amazed and grateful to have been blessed a second time as we move into autumn. And no worries, friends — we are still together, still hugging, and happy as clams. Still, I do wonder why clams are apparently so happy.
