Well, Hello Mr. Sun

Mr. Sun peeking through at me...

Recently I considered a phenomenon about nature that I think is worth sharing.  Of course those of you who think of yourselves as intellectuals may have thought of this much sooner than I, but I'd still like to offer a suggestion that maybe even you have not considered (humor me).  Don't you think the sun is absolutely fascinating?  Well, duh.  The sun is fascinating for many reasons; for beginners, it is the perfect amount of miles from earth (or earth from it, actually) that it gives us the needed warmth to be comfortable, grow all sorts of vegetation, and -- well, pretty much survive.  But it is far enough away to not completely burn us up in a firey ball of wrath.  There are myriad interesting facts about the sun and how it affects our ecology and the system which revolves around it.  

For those of us who lived during the sun-worshipping days of the seventies, we learned from experience that the sun can be your worst enemy if you are not also best buds with a good sunscreen.  In my teenage sun-worshiping years, I remember taking a bar of pure cocoa butter, warming it in my hands till it began to melt and then slathering my fair blond body with it as I baked in the sun for hours on end.  Ditto with baby oil.  Ouch!  Once I had such a bad sunburn that I ran a fever and had to rest in bed for a couple of days. Technically I guess it was sun poisoning.  And today I am suffering the results of too much sun in the form of wrinkles and age spots. Ugh.  So much for "sun worshipping" for this California girl wannabe.

But in more recent days I have thought of the sun in a more personal light (no pun intended).  One day as I was missing my children (which I do just about every single second of every single day, as you know), I had an epiphany.  I thought to myself...I could get all my kids outside at the same time looking at the sun, and we would all be looking at the same thing together at the same time.  Wow!   Pretty silly I know with Skype, iphones and Facetime, email, and television.  There are many opportunities today where we all can be connecting, even all of us together at the same time.  But the thought of us all enjoying the warmth of the sun, something real and necessary for life at the same time gave me such joy -- kind of like, but not as good, having a great meal together around the same table.  I believe this is why:  We could all feast our eyes (not for long, though) upon something real that is vital to life at the very same time together...wherever we are.  Not a picture of something or a cyber picture of something, or a delayed image of something, or something recorded, but at the real thing.  Now, I am smart enough to know this will not work if you're in a different hemisphere from another, in which case the sun may be shining in one while the moon is glowing in the other.  Also, I have yet to try and organize this endeavor, as I am positively sure my kids have more important things to do with their time than to go gaze at the sun for their mom.  But sometimes when I am talking to one of them, I'll say Hey, is the sun shining there?  It is?  Well, go look at it.  And when they do, I say Hey, I'm looking at the same exact sun! You can see the same sun I can see!  The same sun, even though we are 1400 miles away from each other. Just one more small (however silly) way that I can connect with my kids.

But as the hot, humid days of summer are coming to a close and the cooler, clear-blue-sky days of fall approach, I enjoy the warmth of a sunny day more than ever.  Unlike the let me get out of the hot sun brutal days of a southern summer, the cooler days invite us out into the crisp, clear air to gaze towards the sun and be thankful that we have a most excellent source of heat and light for our lives upon this earth.  Even on the occasional bitter cold day we might have during the winter months in the south, the sun affords its gentle warmth to everyone.  And maybe sometimes it might even serve as the great social equalizer as well, especially if it graces us with its glory on the day of our long-awaited picnic at the park.  Also too, if we all just happen to be putting our faces toward it together at exactly the same time -- wherever we are in the world.

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