Sunday

Isn't there an old saying that goes, "You don't know what you got till it's gone?" There is definitely truth in that, and I think it's very important for things to "be gone" for certain periods so that we learn to cherish their presence, otherwise we never truly appreciate their significance. Someone who takes things for granted will never understand what it's like to pine for those missing things if he has never had them taken away. From recent personal experience, I'm thinking of the Sun.

I made the decision to move to the North with all the facts of the lack of the light, and some experience with Germany, but never had a true understanding of what life is like without much sun. There are people who have it even worse in the winters, of course, but to come from the tropics with 365 days of even sunshine into 6 months of winter does something to you. It was a rough time but I made it out okay, and boy is there a light at the end of the tunnel! The lack of sunshine, though hard on my immune system, was a blessing in a way. Rough though its absence was, the Sun's return is dousing me in a happiness and gratitude that I never expected.

Last weekend I went to a gathering in the woods; good people, fun music, bonfires at the edge of a lake that was so still it could have been made of glass, a moon that looked like it was cut out of thick silk, stuffed with glowing magma and stuck onto the sky like a brooch pinned to someone's navy-blue overcoat. The night was cold, I was underdressed, freezing in my layer of sweat that I'd worked up dancing, and chilled by the moisture of the lake air.

We all huddled and cuddled by the fire, most of us were people I'd never seen or met before, yet they somehow weren't strangers in the slightest. Some people talked, some came and went, some curled up and slept, and a few went out to fetch firewood. I mostly just huddled to stay warm and watched them all move about in their ways, as if a play was unfolding before me. The fire crackled and sent swarms of heat out with its flying embers, and I sat until my butt was cold and numb. And I still kept sitting.

A mångata—a beautiful Swedish word for the reflection that the moon makes in water— was laying on the surface of the lake, still as a mime, so still that I refused to believe it was merely a reflection and pretended that the lake had been erased in parts. The distant islands and banks of the lake gazed down at their own tree-clad backs in the grand mirror as if clones themselves hovered in the water.

Hours passed. I really mean hours. I must have sat there for at least 3 or 4 until the darkness tightened its grip and slowly, as if the whole world exhaled, the sky began to lighten. First it was just a dust of slightly lighter blue about the trees, slowly to pull up a band of green, then yellow, orange and pink. The sky was washed with a pastel rainbow, broken only by chain of dark banks and trees and their eerily perfect reflections in the absolutely still lake. We waited, exhausted and cold but determined to keep our eyes open to witness the break of day.

From an outdoor party in Stockholm, July 2011, because I didn't take my camera this weekend....

 Suddenly the most magnificent flaming, pink and orange sliver of concentrated light crept up from behind the trees and rose and widened into a great ball of warmth and hope. I cried for it was a beautiful thing to behold. She's back, she's really back! I think I've never felt such strong love and gratitude toward the sun before, the same sun which I watched set every evening in Hawaii, the same sun which has tanned my skin since I was born to this world, perhaps the one thing that has been present throughout every day of my life. And there she was again, and yet I felt as if I'd never seen her before. So magical and good, so loyal and giving....

We waited for her to rise fully into the sky, until her warmth radiated down as strongly as the fire radiated up, and then we made our way home. Through misty, sun-kissed spiderwebs and morning dew dabbled leaf buds we walked and walked, out of the forest. All day the sun shone, up in the sky but even brighter in my heart. Even when she set behind the horizon outside, she stayed warm inside and she's still there. What a gift she is, never asking for anything in return (aside from the few skin cells she might claim) and single-handedly feeding our existence. I think I've never experienced anything as beautiful as this sunrise on Easter Sunday. It really was a rebirth, a resurgence of life and above all else, it was a Sunday.