For the Love of Change
A flash essay on transitions
When the dark night gives way to the rising sun, white stars against black disappear as the celestial background shifts from indigo to cobalt to light blue. Tree tops give shape beneath an expanding band of pinkish-orange, a promise of what will come. A planet sparkles against purply-blue sky, mirrored in the lake below. A few minutes more and the pinkish-orange stretches into yellow-white pushing the dark further and further upward into the stratosphere. The indigo you see when you tilt your head back and look way, way up will be overtaken with cerulean as the sun shows itself, a yellow sphere rolling up behind the woods. The planet fades and rises higher not wanting to be caught by the spreading light. Soon all that was concealed in the dark of night will be displayed, but not those that stay hidden: the creatures in their burrows, the insects creeping under leaves and rocks, the fish deep in the water.
In the summer you must wake early to witness the world rousing, but as autumn stretches on, you’re up long before dawn. It fuels you, the beauty of a new day, imbues hope, rejuvenation, wonder. You never know exactly what you’ll get. Sometimes, after the burning blaze of morning, the lake becomes shy under the sun’s gaze and a thin mist drifts across the surface displacing clear sky until there’s only thick dull cloud pressing against the windows. It’s as if the lake is embarrassed by the brilliant show and goes into hiding, waiting for the ball of fire to rise higher. As the sunlight warms the air the fog thins until you can once again make out the trees on the opposite shore.
Sometimes, when fog wraps you in its damp embrace you stumble around unsure of the path ahead. But when the clouds dissipate, you’re left with a clearer vision of the road, a novel idea, a problem’s solution, or night comes and you rest.
Twelve hours after sunrise, the reverse. Rays slide across the lake, shimmering off waves, spotlighting leaves as they glow a magnificent red moments before a dark blanket is pulled up the far shoreline and over the trees, tucking them in for the evening. The brightness subdues into dusk, a purply-pink before stars pierce the blue-black sky once again.
You love the in-between times; elongated moments of change charge a searching soul. Every day an opportunity to witness something new, surprising, unknown. Expectation excites, like the slow ascent of a roller coaster and the short pause before you speed down the other side screaming, your stomach in your throat and your brain rattling around your skull, fearful of being thrown from the track or dying of shock, but when it lurches to a stop at the end, which is also the beginning, your heart pounds and you’re alive.
Today, the mist lifts from the bay, races across the water and climbs the forest, as if the sun is sucking in what’s left of the night’s cold. Today, the white swans that visit in winter are back, two families soaring around the lake trumpeting to each other. Today, you’ll walk by a parked pickup truck on your way to meet a sister you didn’t know you had, the aroma of sweetened coffee wafting through the open window easing your nerves into a smile that spreads to the stranger in the passenger seat who beams back, steam from her open cup warming her face. We’re ready for the day.
Tell me (if you feel so inclined), do you like getting up early to watch the sunrise? What transitions are meaningful to you (e.g., seasons changing, perimenopause, marriage, divorce, new parenthood, a new regime)? How do you find everyday beauty in changes that may threaten humanity, in-betweens that are all dread and no excitement?