Taps

As the days shorten and dark comes sooner and 7 p.m. is already night, I turn on the doorway lights and see that my back patio lights and back yard lights automatically have gone on appropriately.  I see summer end and all the fall activities begin.  When I get the agendas for meetings and classes, I feel fresh anticipation for all that the new (now for me the old) school year brings.

I think of the song at the flag lowering with which camp days ended when I, a city girl, was in the countryside and a child camper, and then a teenage counselor.  I heard the song of an end and a beginning.  It is the song Taps that I recall.

Day is done

Gone the sun

From the lakes

From the hills

From the skies

All is well

Safely rest

God is nigh

When I hear Taps I remember both loss and joy.  I feel that same poignancy in fall when my grandson returns to school life after a summer canoeing in camp in Canada, and I recognize that my children’s agendas become more complicated, and responsibilities increase and are more demanding.  I see myself hungrily build a schedule for myself, now far less demanding than formerly , but one for which I am still grateful.  However, in fall, now, I feel the shortening of my time, but also satisfaction for things that I have accomplished and that have mattered to me.

I understand, through my remembering, the sounds of Taps, that my most significant heartbreaking time of the day has always been dusk.  I revel in it and feel both the ends and new beginnings.  I understand now better why I love dusk:  it breaks my heart but it allows for rest.