JOY ALONG THE WAY: THERE'S NO DEJA VU: IT'S ALL A MATTER OF YOUR POINT OF VIEW

Day in, day out, aka sunrise, sunset have a connotation of boredom or fed-upishness (new word!) about them. It shouldn't. No two days are alike. Indeed, no two minutes or seconds are alike. It is out attitude toward the passage of time that determines its tenor. The same things may happen every day but they don't ever happen at the same exact moment nor in the same setting. For example, sunrise and sunset; that timing comes on so slowly it may take us a week to notice the difference. Right now we're ending the stretch of short daylight hours. Eleven more days to the winter solstice.

This hasn't crept up on me. On clear days I make it a point to watch the sun come up and go down. (I know it is the revolving of the earth but we still speak of sunrise and sunset as something the sun does.) Today the sun came up in a fork of the big oak in the Park near the Conservation shelter. It went down about three inches from the north edge of the Chateau's roof. That is, it did from where I was standing.

Tomorrow, if I stand in the exact same spot there would be an infinitesimal change in the location of these happenings. The earth is ever revolving; cells are ever being formed and discarded. It is a long journey to the nadir of things in order to catch the rhythm and to feel you are synchronized with the beat of the universe which is change, change, change. When you've locked onto this you can release yourself from the feeling that you've-been-there-done-that.

Some things you want to experience again and again and this is not to say you can't but you're a few beats backward or forward along the street called Time Continuum.

Yesterday, I wished to experience the joy of making cookies again. Out of the cabinet door pocket came the cookie sheets. Down from the shelves came the spices. Out of the freezer came the citron. The freezer? Yes. This time last year I had such trouble finding citron at the grocery stores. When I did, I bought several little tubs of it and stored them for this year and years to come. There followed the same desirable aroma, the same delicious taste, not quite exactly the same, but very satisfactory.

Years ago, Mama was in the kitchen helping me with supper when she called my attention to a shadow the setting sun was casting on the door of the refrigerator. Due to some conformation of a scalloped shelf brace over the kitchen stove, combined with some hanging gourds on the back porch and a few other things in the line of the sun's rays coming through the back door glass, there was the silhouette of a person's head on the refrigerator door, a definite hate, forehead, nose, mouth, chin. It was so surprising. I moved the tea kettle on the stove an inch and changed the shape of the forehead. The handle of a stew pan was moved and suddenly the mouth had a cigarette in it.

I cannot tell you how much fun I've had with that shadow over the years. I can put a new hat on its head, complete with cocky feather, change the shape of its nose, make the mouth gap open as if in surprise. Of course the silhouette makes its own changes as the sun moves up and down the western horizon as I have so laboriously pointed out. It keeps me so aware that there is no stagnation in time.

That is what we can do if the days seems to drearily alike. We may not be aware of the subtle changes nature makes, but we can certainly make changes of our own if we punch our creative buttons or sew them back on again in case they've loosened or come off entirely.

You think the joys of the Christmas season are always the same? No, they aren't! Their depth is according to how we press the buttons of acceptance, openness, receptiveness, how we press the levers of intensity.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.