Waiting on the Sun

Living in a very new place allows you to discover the conventions so deeply ingrained you never otherwise notice them. Just now I am struggling with my idea that daytime means sun--not the great unblinking pumpkin sun of childhood pictures, not even the bright smiley face sun of a summer day, just enough light that bedside lamps are not required to tell the difference between my watch and my glasses on the side table.

When I write it out, it sounds so simple: if it is morning, then I can see without the bedside lamp. If I have to turn on the light, ergo, it is not morning.

Yesterday the sun shone brightly for perhaps an entire two hours. I was driving into town with the sun, an unabashed globe of warm golden light bereft of clouds, on my right. I rolled down my window in the irrational belief/hope that I could feel the warmth on my face. It was a tease, but even with its cold affection, I relished that light. I walked with just a bit of a spring in my step. I talked with a colleague in her office. We had a cuppa and when I went to leave (only 4pm, mind you), the sun had gone.

Gone. Not dawdling behind a fleecy cloud or swaddled in a bank of clouds, but swallowed whole by the sun-eating monster that lives beyond the edge of the horizon.