The Changing Light

“But endings are not what you remember most,  rather moments of light…”

-Robert Kingsley, From Late Summer Early Fall

Moving into September, the light is changing in ways I can’t quite describe.

Is it more angled? Possibly. More golden? Oh yes. More brief? Certainly, the sun not now rising until the layabout’s hour of 6 a.m. 

A relatively late start to the day, this far east.

“Heaven!” my father would proclaim if he were here. Bright, dry, 60 to 70 degrees. “It doesn’t get better than this.” 

I say it to myself. 

Smaller endings, like summer’s departure, or Griffin’s return to college, remind me of a crochet hook, twisting and wrapping themselves around larger endings, pulling them down for us to see. 

Unwelcome, or otherwise.

The way Dad’s exultation in a perfect day stayed with him to the end, even when so many other things had left him. The way I often rose before dawn, lighting a candle in the kitchen. Hearing my movements, I’d soon hear his – slippers on floor, cane tapping alongside. 

He’d lift the cane and point to the candle. “I love that,” he’d say, smiling.

“Me, too,” I’d say, smiling back. 

The way that – was it a few weeks ago?– a passing memory could render the world empty, suddenly devoid of parents again, me a child (hardly) untethered to the Earth. As if I were Wile E. Coyote, walking off a cliff without noticing, and now that I’ve noticed, falling.

Then today, the light changes, and Dad is with me everywhere. 

Ready to go apple picking. 
Impatient to bake pie. 
Prodding for a batch of beef stew.
Lighting a candle on the table.
And rejoicing in the weather.

Heaven.