Shades of Gray

It's been sneaking up on us for weeks, technically for more than a month. The hours of daylight have already started to shrink, and we're barely into August. The little boy in me (okay, very, very deep inside of me. Happy now?) always feels sad when I realize the getting dark after dinner part is starting earlier and earlier. 

It's not like I'm hurrying to clean my plate so I can be excused to go over to Neil's house and then down the street to Bobby's and call them to come out and play catch. Heck, if those two are in half the shape I'm in, by the time we get to the sandlot, it'll be pitch black. Life called on account of darkness. There's one for the stat books.

As hot and humid as it's been here in Southeast Connecticut (I really hate when I break a sweat early in the morning not doing anything but standing in one place, inhaling and exhaling), I'll whine just as piteously (actually more so) in February when the snow's crisp and even and the temperature is hovering somewhere south of freezing. I'm the person who bitches if he's hanged with a new rope. 

However, the seasonal decline of the light saddens me, especially as I age, because I view life as a finite commodity and don't appreciate reminders that it flows within and around me, particularly the latter aspect.

An acquaintance was observing the other day how grey the skies were where they are right now-which I think is probably a kinder idea in the spring and summer than in the autumn and fall since during the latter many of us peer at the heavens warily and observe 'if it gets any colder, with this sky, it'll snow.' 

Because they are considerably younger than I am, as are most people on earth, I didn't comment on the slightly disappointed tone of unhappiness they had about the weather and its impact on their family's working vacation. You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain, but when you are, you should be kinder than when twenty isn't visible in the mirror anymore.  

I won an all-expense paid stay at Sondrestrom Air Base, Greenland, in the mid-seventies, where in addition to triple-digit below-zero (Fahrenheit) temperature and winds over seventy miles an hour coming off the Polar Cap, we had twenty-four-hour daylight that became twenty-four-hour darkness.

I remember the day in late January when the sun was first visible over Mount Ferguson (not to be confused with Lake Ferguson, or Craig Ferguson for that matter) for no more than about three minutes (maybe), but we didn't care. It was Independence Day, New Year's, and Mardi Gras all rolled into one, reminding us it's not always going to be this grey.  
-bill kenny