Do you feel like I do, that when we pass the time to "spring forward" and set the clocks for Daylight Saving Time, it gets really confusing for around a week to even consider making dinner while it is still light outside?
Moving to another country has some of the same confusions. How strange it must be for an Australian to move to London and instead of spending Christmas going to the beach, they have to dress for rain and sludge and cuddle with hot toddies.
Comparatively, I have just moved from 56th to 32nd North, but that is still quite a difference. Plants, that belonged in pots in the window in the old country, here grow like trees in the wild. Acacias would have been a few expensive branches in a vase some time around March; now they have already bloomed along the wayside end January - but what a blessing is this splash of bright yellow in the middle of winter.
Winter! Ha! (You now nothing, Jon Snow.)
True. Winter at 32N, California style is nothing. I just got some pictures from a friend in Germany showing little kids dressed for real winter. My son has had his shorts out for weeks. We have stopped wearing an extra layer for going outside and it is not even April.
The day-to-day part of me thinks it is really nice. Nobody, not even those growing up in the higher North, thinks it is a charm when the sun gets up at 9 or later and has dipped below the horizon mid afternoon - if it has shown its face at all, because winter in Northwestern Europe is cloudy and wet. People suffer regularly from Seasonal Affective Disorder and ought to have prescription lightbulbs.
But as the year turns, there are times when it is just wrong. Like Christmas on the beach if it should be snowing. Easter without daffodils because they bloomed a month too early. Picking fruit at the wrong seasons - or some not growing at all because it is not cold enough.
Our olfactory senses are intricately connected to our memory centers; flowers can send us right down memory lane when their scent meets our noses. If they bloom at the wrong time of year, it can throw us a little off keel to have memories in winter that "belong" in late spring - or vice versa.
I have adjusted to daylight saving time by now. My son brought me way too much knowledge about this subject through this video. He regularly shares such excellent information - like this it makes me laugh out loud, shake my head, and learn something new - all at the same time. He keeps me updated on other important developments in modern culture, that I might have missed for not having a teenager in the house.
So while we are heading into April, he has warned me that "Winter is coming!" Evidently it is coming next Sunday when HBO starts up the new season of "Game of Thrones".
By then I should have planned summer vacation - in a place where I may have to wear eye shades not to be awakened by the sun at 3 in the morning; where the sun will set very late. and where the night never gets really dark. We will prepare for having dinner at odd hours...