Today, I got an extra hour.

It began in the wee hours of the morning, when I woke up to use the bathroom. Like usual, I checked the time on my phone. 

3:31 am.

Is this the new time, or the old time? As I lay back down, after finishing my ritual by getting a sip of water from the tap, my thoughts wandered:

. . . is it really 4:31 am, or is it 2:31 am? In the fall, we “fall back” an hour, which would mean that it is really 4:31 am, except that we are now back on standard time, not daylight savings time, which was a practice instituted during the world wars to conserve energy someway somehow. Then I think that, since 3:31 am is the standard time, that it is the real time, and as my husband was snoozing like Sleeping Beauty (ahh . . . no snoring), I got comfortable and fell back asleep.

Next, I woke to the grayness that I knew was sunlight. 5:55 am. 

I decided to launch into my cooking plan for the day. Potato and kielbasa soup to slow cook during the morning hours and to be ready for lunch on this most appropriate first day of November. Chilly and rainy, perfect for standing on the porch just a minute, just enough to cool down after my perimenopausal steam puffs have almost gotten the better of me after I let the breakfast hash browns stick to the iron skillet, fill up the sink with dirty dishes, and overflow the countertop with cluttered ingredients.

But by 8:00 am, I am fed, the dishes are done, and I’m finishing my coffee on the couch, reading Ephesians, imagining it in one continuous text as a letter, the way Paul intended, uninterrupted by headings, chapters, and verses. I gain insight. I add “reader’s Bible” to my Christmas wish list.

By 8:15, I’m in the shower.

By 9:00, I’m dressed and ready to go to church. I’m back on the couch, working on an article. Not this article. The idea for this one hasn’t even come to mind just yet.

By 10:00, I’m out the door and driving to church.

By 11:00, I’m thinking of this article. 

By 11:45, we’re on the way home, and I tell Sweet Husband of my early morning visit to the bathroom and how I was sure that it was the correct time. We discuss recent events, the wars and rumors of wars and potential cyberattacks and whether or not we should pull the empty gallon of milk out of the garbage, rinse it out, and start storing up water. You know, he said, if someone really wanted to mess with something, they’d hack into the time servers. So much depends on the time servers. Like what, I ask, though I know that so much depends on the correct time. Thus ensues a brief description of synchronicity of national and worldwide transactions and the determination that maybe we should also get a sundial.

By 12:00 pm, I’m home again, and I deem the soup worthy. I ladle a tasting into a bowl to make sure of it. I make grilled cheese sandwiches, and the family comes over, and we celebrate the day.

There are crisp and earthy root vegetables and garlic hummus. There are slices of Evercrisp apples that need no accompaniment, for they came straight from an orchard in Ellijay, Georgia and taste like fall itself. The soup is smoky-flavored and also stands alone. I eat two bites of my grilled cheese, abandoning it for the soup. I’d eat a second bowl, but the apples and the radishes and the carrots are better. Some unconscious part of myself is also resetting, just like the time, and I’m drawn to foods in their natural state, unimproved by human hands.

The rain has picked up, but the patchy glow of the yellow and orange sawtooth oak leaves make me think the sun is beaming down. I sit at the end of the countertop, and I can see directly out the window. The pond is pattering with the drops.

But then there are brownies for dessert, and we talk about people who believe that the earth is flat and do not believe that humans have landed on the moon. I give a brief exposition from my time as a camp counselor at Space Academy, when I had to cram random knowledge for an eight-week stint teaching cerebral middle schoolers about how astronauts go to the bathroom on the Space Shuttle. During the last week of my Space Academy experience, I was assigned a group of sixteen twelve-year-old boys who had all just completed the sixth grade. Deodorant was scarce in that July humidity, but two of my charges nearly came to blows about which astronaut was the most critical on the Apollo missions.

One of the family talks about the recent Artemis missions, and I wonder what those boys are doing now. Are any of them in line for Artemis III?

Time slips away, and the family leaves, and I’m snoozing by 3:00 pm (really 4:00 pm).

By 3:45 pm, I’ve got the computer in my lap, and I’m working away on my tasks.

By 4:00 pm, the cat has sidled up next to me, and she decides to sit on a draft that I’ve been working on intermittently for two years. Wouldn’t it be nice to finish it? Yes, it would, and time is ticking. 

But by 4:42 pm, I’m researching Evercrisp apples, for the roughness of their skin and the firmness of their flesh remind me of an unripe pear. An Evercrisp is a cross between a Honeycrisp and a Fuji apple, but if the apocalypse comes, we will have to depend on the apple trees in my parents’ yard and the pear trees in the pasture that have borne fruit for decades. Their fruit isn’t as sweet, but they are hard as rocks and will last a while if we can keep the bugs out of them. My grandmother used to can those pears in halves for eating with a dollop of mayonnaise and a maraschino cherry on top. I’m sure there are still some jars in the back of her old pantry. The last time I checked, there were products dated ‘88 in its dark recesses, the numbers scratched into the gold and silver lids with the tip of an old can opener.

By 5:00 pm, it’s getting dark. I get up, stretch my legs, and wonder if it is too early to make myself a cup of chamomile tea. I decide it is not too early, and I’m glad that the sun has set.

I’m glad that the television is not on. I’m glad that my phone is quiet. I’m glad that the cat and the dog are beside me on the couch.

It’s almost like the apocalypse has happened, but I’ve got more peace than I’ve had in a month of Sundays.

I’m glad for my extra hour. I do not struggle with the darker evenings, for I love lamplight, candlelight, and Christmas lights. I know that the sunlight will be shorter each day until the winter solstice, when it will start on its gradual lengthening. I am comforted by perfect times, by the seasons continuing on their eternal cycle, and that the earth is round, and that we did, indeed, go to the moon.

But alas, the spring, much beloved as it is, will ask for my extra hour back, and I’ll pay it like my taxes, with my jaw set and eyes narrowed, making sure I don’t give one iota more than I owe.