All Faculty Excerpts

Daylight Saving Time: The Power of Growing Older

This is an excerpt from David Berner's new book, out now wherever books are sold.

***

The gray that seeps through the curtains is deep and yet murky like the light in a scene from an old movie. It must be quite early. I roll over and nestle against a pillow, not about to return to sleep—I like it here. I am alone and it is a good place to linger. After all, it must be at least an hour before sunrise, and it’s my birthday.

Eventually, I become curious, and I reach for my phone. It is later than I had thought. Nearly 7 a.m. There is a text on the screen from my younger son. The words sent sometime overnight. I love sharing my birthday with you, he has written, and wish there was a way I could share this with my future son or daughter. I love you like crazy dad. Happy birthday brother. My son was born late at night on my thirty-sixth birthday. Gifts come in many ways.

My wife is already awake and dressed. She returns to the bedroom, leans into the sheets, and kisses me.

“It’s your birthday,” she says, her voice animated.

“That, it is,” I mutter, not yet convinced of my morning footing.

In the bathroom mirror I see a man, one who is old with gray hair and tired eyes, yet this is a man who does not feel old. Yes, morning has yet to be shaken from these bones, but old is someone else. Not me. I angle closer to the glass and scratch my white beard, several days of growth. I think I’ll keep it for a while. I think I’ve earned it. The reflection reminds me of a black-and-white photograph of a man I had recently seen in a story on the web about art in New Mexico. He is a painter who lives somewhere near the small town of Madrid. He carries unruly white hair and a scruffy snowy beard. His stare is intense. Sun-soaked skin. In a few months I hope to be in Los Cerillos, the town just up the dusty road from Madrid. Maybe I can say hello.

I don’t think much of my birthday anymore. Not that I don’t like it, it is only that I am more indifferent than interested. It is not about aging, the slow and inevitable march, but instead it is the idea of time, that manmade concept. What does the counting of years really mean anyway? Still, my son’s text and my wife’s kiss are precious, and as I remain before the mirror, I am aware through my still weary eyes of the splendor of gratitude.

Before long, I’m in the shed. The space heater needs more time, so I’m bundled in fleece and a watchman’s cap. A breeze is building. I hear a wind chime tingling and I write to the music. Through the window I see the last of the season’s leaves on the grass, and in the distance, a neighbor has left a string of outdoor lights on through the night; the bulbs glow yellow in the bare trees. I am alone in the softness of it. Picasso said that without solitude, no serious work is possible. But solitude without time may instead be loneliness. Time can do that. In these early hours, although I write, the solitude before me is more meditation than work. It is a gift.

I return to the house. My wife has the radio on, the news on NPR. I tolerate it as I make coffee. This is not a gift, this news of the day. So, I shake from it and think of the casita in the Chihuahuan Desert along the Turquoise Trail south of Santa Fe, east of the Rio Grande, where prospectors once came to find gold, where the desert rose blooms, where the stars are impossible to count.

***

Reprinted with permission from Collective Ink Publishing, UK. You can learn more about David and his work here.