First of all, I’m not anti-streetlight.
That’s important to note, before I start. After a decent amount of cross-state driving by night and living in a neighborhood where we’ve had at least one failed drive-by, I’m grateful for them. Love them, in fact. This attachment to them is strongest about now, when my body is in a long-standing fight with the winter solstice and the sun abandons us by 4:30*. Streetlights are good company on the boulevards when the dogs and I both need a walk. The single investment made on our block directly in front of my house is a welcome sight when I’m unloading groceries and double checking the bushes. In another time, they were the beckoners of outside children at dinner time, the signal for offices to close up shop, the sign that a wardrobe is more than it seems. Streetlights are friends of mine. I notice them most when they go out.
Secondly, I hate cliches. It’s important to grieve the night. We must make room for the things that mattered to us, it is the price we pay for loving them deeply. It is a worthy and noble cost. On darker nights, it’s not only ok to be disappointed in the lack, it is so very needed. It isn’t overused sentiments I hate in concept, it’s only that I rely on them to give me an out. With a cliche in my back pocket, I no longer have to feel the depth of whatever is happening.
There are lamps in my life I once counted on, now dimming. This year, we’ve all felt it. It’s been dark. This is not the way things were supposed to be.
Here is what I will also say, something equally true. Sometimes the dark can be quite...illuminating.
I’ve spent a decent amount of time tramping around rural America and even rural Other Places to learn something we all already know. I found it when 10,000 feet of land above sea level lifted us closer to the sky. It was there in the rare seconds to myself when I sat on cabin stairs and watched heat lightning pulse over Missouri woods. It toasted my cheeks when fire pits were built on little river campgrounds. It wrapped me in moonlit docks as stars began to dot glassy lake waters. It crinkled my mouth corners when my roommate raced to the middle of her cattle farm and pointed upward, shouting “Look! Look!!”
He has numbered them, known each and every by name. None are lost.
There are things that are brighter when everything else is dark.
So, while we stand on the cliff of endings and beginnings, in a year of unending surfacing and I, like most, am grieving weird things, I hope to offer a benediction in the middle of things that finds you where you are:
When the Loud is roaring, may the snow dampen into quiet.
In the cold and ice, may the fireplace be warmer.
When you are weary, may your sleep be sounder.
When the night comes early, may your lamps glow buttery and pleasant.
May your candles smell like Christmas, Autumn, and The Beach ™ in stale houses.
When’s its all heavy, may your couch be a soft place to land.
Maybe your apple cores be a sign of fuller pies.
May your sun be brightest on shorter afternoons,
And when it’s too quiet, may the songs you sing in kitchens, cars, showers and rocking chairs be richer.
May you be sanctified when you are adrift, for now you have a reason to wander.
May you be blessed when you are disillusioned, for it means you are still teachable.
May you be consecrated on the hallowed grounds where you are stretched thin, for now you know what you’re really made of.
May your hope be the most stubborn when all is lost.
Some things are brighter when other things are dark.
I accept the night for what it is.
Dawn isn’t too far, I hope, I’m sure.
But man, in the meantime, do I look forward to the stargazing.
Footnotes:
*I’m very dramatic when it comes to the sun, you know.
