Magical Time

Our home is filled with four children, which means every evening from about 6:00 to 8:30 or so is what we call the "triple witching hour", filled with hungry and tired kids, messy rooms, cooking, dirty dishes, baths, bedtime stories, and other activities typical of suburban American families. It is chaotic, noisy, and exhausting, and it gets repeated every night.

But for the past few evenings, blessed by lovely late-spring Georgia weather, Sylvia and I have been able to recover from triple witching hour by sitting on our back patio, under the canopy of trees that surrounds the back of our house, while dusk falls. The calmness is restorative, and mentally invigorating. The sky slowly fades from the light blue of afternoon into gray, then to dark gray, then to the dark blue of night as the few stars that are able to shine through the urban light pollution twinkle in the heavens. The sounds add to the effect: the ubiquitous traffic noise of inside-the-perimeter Atlanta forms the background, but does not overpower the bark of a distant dog, the rustle of leaves in the dusky breeze, the occasional chirp of a late bird, the soft splash of our neighbor's pool fountain. This week even smell has come into play: the gardenias along our back wall are in full bloom, bathing us with fragrance on the evening breeze.

Our stress level falls with the dimming light; although I am in general a morning person, I have to admit this is a magical time of day. As I watch the earth fall asleep, it is easy to let the cares and concerns of today fade away with the light. Tomorrow will bring a new sun and a new opportunity to work and worry and strive and play. For now, we let our mind rest, just as the earth rests.

These evenings are a good reminder: sometimes it is doing nothing that makes all the difference.