Here Comes the Sun

The sun is back in my face.

I know: Our earthly tilt is tipping us away from the sun--it will soon be the autumnal equinox, then the winter solstice, and it will be, in the words of Stephen King, "full dark, no stars" around here (at least on cloudy nights). Daylight Savings Time will disappear, and people will once again drive to and from work in the dark. And we'll all be grumpy and grousing. Depressed and depressing.

But at Open Door Coffee Co. here in Hudson, the sun is back in my face in the mornings. "My" chair and table point, generally, toward the east, up Aurora Street. I love sitting there. From 1980-1990 we lived at 120 Aurora Street. From 1990-1997 we lived in Aurora itself, the community where I taught from 1966-78 and from 1982-1997. So, as I said, I love looking east on the street named for the goddess of dawn. And for the community that has meant so much to me since 1966.

But beginning in September (and then again, from the opposite direction as the earth begins to reverse its tilt in the late winter) the morning sun peeks around the old bank building right in front of me and sends some brilliance from 93 million miles away to blind me. At first, it's tolerable. (I've become adept at shading my eyes while reading and writing.) But soon it will become full-blown annoying, and, for a half-hour or so, I will have to sit in the other chair at "my" table and let the sun blast me in the back for a while.

Conveniently, in the big eastern window there's a large Open-Door decal that blocks the sun for a bit. It's my favorite decal in the world. I'm imagining that the furious frustrated sun sends the shadow of the Open Door decal all over my body, and I become a sitting and breathing emblem of the venue I love so much. I'm not sure this happens. But I want it to. I'll check tomorrow and tell you--unless, of course, there is no shadow, in which case I (a frustrated ground hog) will leave things precisely as they are.

Which, as I think about it, is pretty much the way I want things to be before, you know, it's full dark, no stars for real for me.