Every year immediately following the summer solstice I hear someone complain that the days are now getting shorter. It’s particularly jarring this year contrasted against the palpable enthusiasm everyone has with the end of pandemic-related restrictions.
It takes a special kind of downer to cry over slightly shorter days when a year ago they were alone drinking spiked seltzer and complaining that Zoom makes their neck look fat.
If your takeaway from the summer solstice is that shortening days are cause for dread, you’re completely missing the point.
The summer solstice is an apex; the pause between an inhale and an exhale where the lungs are temporarily weight-less in the chest neither expanding or contracting, just entirely at ease. It’s earth’s way of regulating our seasonal extremes and nothing worth getting upset about.
I think of it as a little head nod to our main boo, Summer.
This is confusing because the solstice is historically known as midsummer even though our current culture treats it as the start of summer in terms of vacation seasons, school calendars and the Today Show’s Summer Concert Series.
Life in the northern hemisphere is great right now. The weather is just hitting peak awesomeness.
Even though we’re now pulling away from the sun, July is warmer than June because it takes so long for the ground and water to warm up from their winter chill.
As any bagel can attest, a toaster hasn’t even really started working until its coils are burning brightest.
It’s so much better being able to step into a pool up to my *ahem* shorts *ahem* without my voice jumping to a falsetto.
Earlier this week my daughter watched an episode of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood teaching that when something seems bad we should turn it around and find something good.
Daniel’s example is discovering that his smushed tiger cake still tastes yummy. Indeed, his friends didn’t even care that the cake was smushed they just wanted to have fun celebrating together.
Almost immediately after watching that episode I turned on the local weather forecast to see how awesome the week’s weather would be and the meteorologist tried to use the summer solstice to smush my tiger cake bemoaning the loss of sunlight set to occur throughout the months of June and July.
Not this time local demigod Scott Haney.
I’m inspired by Daniel Tiger (or “royally inspired” as Prince Wednesday might say) to take the trolley one stop further and say that the best half of the year is just getting started.
Mr. Roger’s ghost tiger taught me that too many of us are quick to say “nay” when we should be saying “neighbor.”
The negativity surrounding the solar solstice’s momentum shift has got to stop.
It’s a mentality reminiscent of the overweight divorcees with wine-stained teeth who I’d see throughout my childhood crowded into the Spencers store at the mall buying vaguely sexual gag gifts for Over-the-Hill themed birthday parties.
No matter how hard she cackles when they’re opened, “saggy-boob suspenders” have never amused anyone but the gift-giver.
There’s plenty of humor to be found along aging’s one-way path but it’s not for sale between an inflatable cane and a t-shirt asking, “Who Farted?”
I’m coming into the second half of this year’s solar revolution hot rolling with momentum from a first half that included some of the best six months of my life.
The next six months also promise lots of amazing opportunities of their own including exiling my newborn son from the bassinet where he currently sleeps just inches from my head, taking our first vacation as a family of four, not feeling weird about being back in public, and most exciting of all – baby’s first Christmas!
No matter what your take is on Jesus, you can’t deny he throws a hella good birthday party.
Christmas is my favorite day of the year and also one of its shortest.
So lets stop all this sky-is-falling negativity about losing a little daylight and enjoy the rest of this trip around the sun.
There’s a lot to look forward to in our ever-shortening days and thanks to the miracle of science, we’ll get to do it safely together.
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