Before the Sun Sets

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007


Bookmarked on my computer is a handy little Web page that shows a calendar that lists the times of sunrise and sunset, moon rise and set, and various types of twilight. I’ve been watching it regularly the past few weeks as I try to hold on to the last days of summer and prepare for the coming of autumn.

I’m not really complaining about the waning of summer; the fewer the days when the heat and humidity combine to line my brow with sweat and make time spent outside feel considerably akin to time spent behind prison bars, the better for me. But it seems that there are facets of the season that I am trying not to let go.

It’s all a little like watching the clock on a large scale, a bad habit that the unlucky of us fall into in grade school and do not relinquish even into our 30s and 40s with their workday world. From this online calendar, I can see that sunset today comes at 7:21 p.m.; Monday at 7:19 p.m., Tuesday at 7:18 p.m., and on and on until the day in late September when the sun rises at 6:52 a.m. sets at 6:51 p.m., giving us almost exactly 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. We all know where this ends up — the day you walk out to your car at 4 p.m. and have to use a flashlight to get your key in the car door lock.

Believe me, I don’t get all misty-eyed and “Fiddler on the Roof” about this, humming “Sunrise, sunset/Sunrise, sunset/Swiftly fly the years …” in between hanging up on irritating newsroom callers. This is no existential longing to extend my youth and delay the coming of the autumn of my years.

I just like the taste of a fresh ear of corn, preferably from the farm stand along Creek Road in Cossart, Pennsbury, where clerks throw juicy peaches to the workers on the scrap metal train from Coatesville as they slowly pass by on the Conrail tracks that follow the Brandywine Creek south to Wilmington, Del.

I just like the way you feel invigorated when diving into a cool wave as it crashes over you at the beach after you’ve baked long enough in the heat of the midday sun, sitting on a chair in the sand with the proper amount of SPF 45 on your melanoma-free skin.

I just like the sunny stillness that you get in the morning on South Church Street, when the neighborhood boys come out with their mother to wait for the yellow bus that will take them off to the classroom where they will learn their history and math and English and, most importantly, their clock-watching skills.

I just like the warm evenings on the porch with the quiet conversations among neighbors or pleasant encounters with strangers, who say they are going uptown for ice cream and wonder if you’d like some and really do come back with a cup of mint chocolate chip stored in the bottom of the baby carriage.

I just like knowing that even if/when they lose today, the Phils are going to be playing tomorrow and that maybe Ryan Howard will launch one that actually leaves the entire ballyard.

Those things could all technically happen come autumn. But they just wouldn’t feel the same as they do when sunset comes after 8 p.m.