Sunny Days

It’s tempting during the sweltering summer months to despise the sun.

Ah, but come winter, a day of sunshine that follows overcast and foggy days is pure gold with a Vitamin D boost.

Where I’ve lived on the Rolling Plains for most of my life, this fixture in our galaxy is not obscured by mountains or forests. Weather patterns here give us lots of hours with either solar comfort or sunburn.

In either case, the sun is good for my psyche. The day’s light without an overcast sky boosts my spirit and my mental state. Even watching those old westerns with the blazing sun beating down on farmworkers in fields or cowboys on trail never diminished my preference for a sunny day.

The aptly named golden hours after dawn and prior to dusk just add to the magic of what the sun offers. Photographers and poets know this all too well.

Songwriters get it, too. You can “walk on sunshine,” have a “pocketful of sunshine” or have “sunshine in your soul.” Bill Withers even sang about the sadness when there “ain’t no sunshine [when she’s gone].”

Of course, it’s January. Come July after thirty plus days of searing heat and temps over 100, I’ll be looking for rainy days and Mondays.

However, for a few days, I will enjoy sunshine, blessed sunshine in my soul, all glorious and bright. And that’s a song I grew up singing on many Sunday and Wednesday nights long after the sun had set.

Thanks, Creator, for the Fourth Day gift.

Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.