Sunrise Sunset

 

Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the days

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

 I realized that it is almost nine years since I received a message from Rick: “I’m in Geneva, can we have coffee.” 

The answer was yes. After 24 years we'd found each other again. 

We had our commitment ceremony the next year and in 2015 our legal ceremony. I guess we can’t say we’re newlyweds anymore, although I love him more now then I did then. It doesn’t seem that many sunrises and sunsets have passed since that message, but most were as beautiful as the first, even the ones hidden by fog, snow or rain.

I’ve lived through many sunrise/sunsets. There’s another lyric in that Fiddle on the Roof song.

Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

I don't remember growing older

When, did, they?

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday when they, were, small

I think of the children that have wandered through all those days between the sunrises and sunsets. A good part of my heart is occupied by my own daughter. Memories abound: her head popping over the bumper guard on her crib. I can tune into the big and small events of her life. She is now a fully grown woman, a woman I like as well as love.

I think of telling my daughter about Nandita delivering a baby. Nandita lived down the hall and visited me almost nightly. We watched The Weakest Link, made cookies, carved pumpkins over the years. She gave tours of my apartment to her friends, “and this is her penguin collection,” she’d say. We would “shoot” rainbows with my prism. “I didn’t know she was married,” my daughter, a continent away, said. “She isn’t. She’s a doctor,” I replied.

I think of Tim as bump now in his third years of university.

I think of Viv, first seen as a bump. I didn’t want to say anything to her mother, in case it was weight gain. My friend laughingly told me she was pregnant. Eleven-year-old Viv is taller than I am.

Sunrise Sunset

I think of all my parents, my stepmom, my aunts and uncles and a couple of cousin now dead and the holidays and regular days spent together.

Sunrise Sunsets

I think of all the people who influenced me, gave me my world view.

Teachers: Dr. Helen Zimmerman, Leonard D’Orlando, Dr. Patricia Goler

Friends: Mardy Willson, Susan Jordan, Julia Schmitz-Leuffen, Dr. Marina Rizk, Dr. Barbara Hagaman who were there when storms hid the sunrises and sunsets. Mardy once said when we hadn’t been in touch for several weeks after almost constant contact during a difficult period for both of us, “You know I’m more than a foul weather friend,” referring to how damp both are shoulders were when we were going through the traumas. There were better survived with friends.

Many in the list are gone into the sunset while remaining in my heart and soul.

Sunrise Sunsets

I’ve lived in many places watching the sunrises and sunsets, some for decades some for weeks: 

• Reading, Lowell, Waltham and Boston, MA
• Bluefield, WV
• Bramwell, WV
  
• Washington, D.C.
• Westport, Ireland
• Edinburgh, Scotland
• Castanet (Toulouse) and Argelès, France
• Stuttgart, Germany
• Môtiers, Payerne, Grand Saconnex, Corsier Port, Collonge-Bellerive, Switzerland
  

Each are as fresh in my mind as when they happened. I remember where I put the dishes, the pots and pans, the silverwear, although I misplace things that are in my daily life. I can conjure up the smell of my daughter baking, except the night we ate all the brownie batter before baking while watching Dallas.

Sunrise Sunset

I’ve fallen asleep after many sunsets, a book across my chest. I’ve reached for the book with the first sunset. I fought for my education. My schools:

• Mrs. Jones’ Kindergarten
• Lowell Street School
• Miss Blanche’s Academy
• Highland Street School
• Prospect Street School
• Parker Junior High
• Reading Memorial High
• Merrimack College
• Lowell University (now, although it has had many names)
• Boston University
• Glamorgan University (Wales)
• Lancaster University (England)

Sunrise Sunsets

Like the song says, the days have passed swiftly. Most of have been different degrees of happy with enough sadness and pain to truly appreciate the good. Although it has been torn down and replaced with another house, I can picture coming home from school and stealing my brother’s last cupcake my grandmother had made, the flat in Stuttgart with a bathtub, taking notes in class and researching a paper at the Boston Public Library, sitting watching DVDs with my housemate, watching my husband’s excitement at the beauty of the Alps.

The memories are in color just like the sunrises and sunsets.