Extra hour day

Today it will seem like I get to have an extra hour, since Daylight Saving Time ended this morning. It's funny how my mind works: there is no difference in the length of the day, but it seems like it. Now in the mornings it will be light out when I walk to the bus, and dark earlier. Here in Bellingham, the sun will set at 4:40pm, and by the end of December it will be dark before 4:00.

I have been asked by many of my friends here if the darkness bothers me. It seems that many people really suffer from the short days, long nights, and often-rainy winter weather. I'm not sure if I will one day feel that pain, but so far, I've enjoyed the warm cozy long evenings and have taken up knitting. Of course, my computer and the feeling of connectivity through my news blogs and the more than sixty-odd blogs I follow from all over the world certainly help. Through the internet, I read about the adventures of my virtual friends, most of whom are older, like me, with the occasional young mother whose children I love to read about and who fill another need. At the coffee shop four days a week, I visit with Leo, who I have watched grow from a baby to a toddler. He comes over to me with his latest book and plops it in my lap. He's beginning to talk now and knows my name. It means so much to me to see his beautiful, bright little face smile at me when he sees me.

The last few days I've woken from sleep with a positive attitude. I don't know what causes it exactly, because sometimes I wake with a pervasive sadness. It helps to remember that whatever feeling I have today is fleeting. It gets better, or it gets worse. I wonder if my age has anything to do with it. When I was a young woman, I couldn't ever feel that my situation would change; it felt permanent. Maybe this is one benefit of getting older: your perspective becomes larger, more expansive, and more forgiving of the human condition. It also becomes more precious, since I know that the length of my life is mostly behind me, and the years ahead are limited. That's okay.

I went to the endodontist this past week to get a root canal, since the crown I got in June has not settled down. My dentist had given me a referral, so I decided to have an expert assess the situation. His prognosis is that, for now, it's not necessary. He told me what to watch for, and said it may not ever stop sending me a twinge of shock now and then when eating or drinking. I also learned that 25-40% of all crowns will eventually need root canals, and as one ages, that percentage continues to increase. Things wear out, and our teeth are not immune. I remember when I was little, almost every person who was my present my age had dentures, and now it's not very common at all.

That reminds me of a woman I met when I was on a trek in the Peruvian Andes. My friend Marla and I were on a week-long trek into the mountains, and we followed a donkey trail to a little village named Colcabamba that our guidebook said was a good place to replenish our supplies. Well, nothing came into that village except by burro, so we were oddities indeed, two women arriving by foot. We were taken in by a wonderful Quechua matriarch, given a place to sleep and food for our journey. The woman and I had some common language: we both spoke some Spanish. I learned that we were the same age, 38. But she looked ancient, and when she smiled, she had only three or four teeth that showed, and all of them were dark and rotten. No endodontists here. No dentists, either. The Quechua chew coca leaves like we use coffee, and they also chew them with lime to release the active ingredients in the leaf. This wreaks havoc on their teeth. So even at a relatively young age, my friend in the Andes was not going to keep her teeth. But I will never forget her. I wonder if she is still alive, thirty years later.

I followed the mid-term elections closely this week, and I was so pleased that Senator Murray here in Washington won re-election. It was touch and go for awhile, and I had braced myself for the worst. Although the Democrats took it on the chin, I did my small part and voted for my local Dems. The health care bill was touted at the main reason we lost the House, but for my part, I am glad they passed it, even with all the political carnage it cost us. We only had a small window of opportunity, and what was passed was so weakened by compromise it hardly resembled the public option I hoped they would pass. But the foot is in the door, and I don't believe it is possible to repeal it. I hope it will be strengthened as the years go by, for the sake of my young friends, like little one-year-old Leo, who deserves to have affordable, accessible health care when he gets sick.

Well, that's the state of my world here on November 7, the day I get an extra hour. What's going on in your little place in the vast Universe?