In August, the ticking of the world’s clocks grows ever louder. In part that’s due to the looming closeness of the school year, a tangled cliff that’s always been present at the edge of summer’s smooth plateau (and that through my lifetime has come to begin ever earlier). This is my fault: I have clearly exacerbated my sense of summer’s mortality by choosing a career at a university, where I get to experience over and over again the mingled stress and excitement, the do-I-really-want-to-be-here-again doubt, that comes of the ever-renewed and ever-challenging encounter between teachers and students.
But that old and consistent timepiece is not the only one I hear. During this election year, there is the parlous countdown to November 5, a here’s-how-many-days-we-have-left checklist consequential enough that we know (whatever our political beliefs are) that tens of millions of our fellow citizens are going to be dismayed once that clock tolls. Some say the outcome of the election doesn’t matter all that much. But to many on both sides it feels something like a roll of an enormous stake-everything bet in Vegas, with the outcomes of either winning or losing it all incomprehensibly removed from one another, proof of just how unreversible time is.
And yet that ominous ticking is not what I most bear in mind when I wake early, with the dawn blooming in the east window that we keep open all summer to catch the cool night breezes.
Even if I have gone to bed late, it is almost impossible for me to sleep in on a summer morning. I know that perhaps half of those reading this will roll their eyes here, for seeking real understanding between the early birds and the night owls can seem as difficult as getting the blue and the red to agree on anything tied to this year’s election. But for me, the earliest hour of a summer morning is both the sweetest possible time to be alive and also, especially as the days grow shorter, the time most infused with the sense that is going to be over soon.
OK, I did go through a night-owl phase of life, back in high school and college and young adulthood. This was driven in large part by my desire to not be thought a freak by my friends, who liked the usual diversions of staying up late listening to music and going out to the all-night diner. For a while I had jobs, too, that kept me working well into the evening. And I managed, fueled by caffeine and music and conversation. But once I became more settled I reverted back to where I’d begun, to being one of those annoying people who rises with the sun.
It really is an old pattern. In the upper Midwest, the days grow truly long in May and June, and I remember once when I was about nine or ten deciding that I wanted to walk down the lake to see the next day’s sunrise. As my room faced north I was worried that I wouldn’t wake up in time, so I instead settled down to sleep in my mom’s little study, which had windows that faced east and south, and no curtains. Here, I figured, I could be fully in tune with the sun.
I settled down to sleep in the quiet, only to find myself so ramped up with anticipation about getting up uber-early that I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and twisted on the little daybed. At some point I imagined, in the deep stillness, that I was hearing some sort of tiny sound that, once heard, could not be unheard. It was a regular rhythm, hardly anything at all, but enough to further disrupt my sleep.
I turned on the light, and followed the sound to its origin at the base of the wall under the windows, where I spotted a small spider that appeared to be eating a fly. I was hearing its chewing. I decided I was not too worried about the spider myself—it was fully occupied, after all. But knowing this literal life-and-death drama was going on only a few feet away did not help my getting to sleep.
I overslept, of course, and was dismayed when I saw the next morning’s sunlight pouring in through the windows, my hopes of seeing the sunrise over the lake dashed. It would still be long day, though. I tried to make the most of it. As is still true now, in August, even as I every day have the consciousness that sunrise comes a few minutes later than it did the day before.
It is this terrible knowledge that before too long the days will be far shorter, and colder, that really gets me out of bed. The imperative is stronger now than it was back in June, when the summer seemed to stretch indefinitely on much as it did back when we got out of grade school those many years ago.
As for those of you who are night owls, talk amongst yourselves about how nutty the early risers are, or how wonderful it is to enjoy the midnight hours. Just do it quietly, as I’ll be asleep.
