Eveningtime by Kat Magendie

There is a business to the coming of eveningtime. First, the critters who sleep away the night are up to last minute feeding, or nesting, or whatever their duty calls them to do. Then, there are the night critters beginning to stir from their hidey places so when it turns dark, they can go about the business of finding food, and drink, and each other. Same with people: winding down the day, or those who just begin to start theirs.

I am sitting in my library typing this--oh and my library is quite tender and small, but it is full of books. Books are squeezed in every space they can be filled unless there is something else that needs to be clear of books: like chairs, the floor, a table with a lamp, doo dads and rocks and old albums and photographs and this computer and a dog bed and...so on it goes. And as I sit, I hear the first cricket. It is an eveningtime that brings back to me memories of when I was a girl, running barefooted, hating to hear my mother call out, "Time to come in! Kids! In! Now!" And we kids would trudge in, our feet dirty; in fact, every surface of our body and clothing dirty, tangled hair, fingernails filled with dirt from digging for treasures. Then, as now, the crickets would start their conversations. If we were lucky, the fireflies, or lightening bugs, would just begin to flash...that is, if we'd delayed going inside by hollering out to our mother, "Five more minutes, please!" Five more minutes always meant "until Mother gets mad and says, 'I'm not telling you again! Time to come in!'" Stampede home, all the dirty feet flying to suppers, baths, errant homework, bed.

But now, right now is the eveningtime of my life here and now. I sit in this library overstuffed with books and listen to the right-before-dark descend. There is a pause, a moment on the brink, and before I have time to wonder at being on the cusp of something wonderful and nostalgic, the dark falls, heavy and soft all at the same time. How can I forget gratitude when I am in the eveningtime?

Bug and Birds and Bookends by Patresa Hartman

I love the bookends of my day -- a still morning and buzzing night. I feel so pulled to morph with the earth, let the tides of my sloshy insides become the tides of the sloshly planet juices, leave the windows open, the curtains open, everything open and open and open. I like to sleep with the moon in view, although I've heard this makes wild women crazy. I am grateful for the crazy. I love the communion I feel when I am just waking and again when I am edging toward sleep.

I have my routines, of course. Although I think of them less as routines (habitual behaviors, like tics) and more as rhythms. My morning rhythm is timed to the sky brightening through the picture window in the living room, is textured by the smooth fiber of my red chair, smells like dark coffee, feels like newsprint. My evening rhythm is syncopated against a cricket chorus (They are sopranos and tenors.), a plane overhead, the television my husband watches, my neighbors clinking bottles and chortling through screened windows. Every bedtime comes with a soundtrack.

I am grateful for transition, particularly when it's gradual. I cannot wake and run, cannot run then sleep, and so I try to model myself after the dawn and the dusk, no hurry to show the peak of my color, but to revel in every subtle hue in between. I love a good journey. I want no rush.

There have been phases of my life during which time I got no cushion. There was little time to sit in the morning, and even less time to descrendo into night. Every day felt like lurching. My temper was quick, my emotions unpredictable, my soul exhausted. And so I think it must not be natural for us to begin and to end at sprints. I am grateful for the bugs and birds who teach me to step gently in and gently out.