Seeking a bit of enlightenment as autumn days grow darker

November is terrific, all except for this early dusk business.

Something about daylight-saving time makes me melancholy. This is not seasonal affective disorder, thank you. The Fisher-Paulsons have their own chapter in the DSM-5, and no, we do not need another diagnosis. I get up at 4 in the morning for work, so I function well in the dark. I brush my teeth, put on sneakers and take Queenie out to the lawn, all without sunlight. It doesn’t matter to me when dawn happens. I am up before it.

But having sunsets at 5 in the afternoon makes life seem shorter somehow. This calls for a day off, when I can still wake up before the sun but sip my matcha in the dining room — not in the car on 101 north. A day out in the sun.

We took off Nov. 2, Dia de los Muertos, because it was Sarah’s birthday. I kept my work phone with me, but still it was nice not to wear boots, a uniform and a gun belt on a Wednesday.

Sarah and Jill live in Alameda, an island town I find charming, except for the trip through the Posey and Webster Street tubes, underneath the Oakland Estuary. Completed in 1928, these are the oldest immersed underwater vehicular tunnels in the world. The Holland Tunnel is older but was not immersed, in that it was not built by sinking concrete segments into a trench. And 94 years of submerged concrete makes me nervous.

Once safely through the underpass, however, I was calm by the time we met at the Wescafe. We sat outside under the pergola to defy the chill of the approaching winter.

I divide history into what we did before COVID and what we did after. Like 9/11, it makes for demarcation. Before March 2020, we used to get together because we had children, and they could all play basketball or video games with each other, while the adults sat in the backyard and hoped that no one broke a bone.

The sun has set on those years. Post-pandemic, those children are now teenagers. None of them wants to spend a minute more with adults than is necessary. We’re at the age when the only family who wants to spend more quality time with us is the dog. We are waiting to be empty-nesters.

Now we do middleaged things without the teens. We’ve gone to modern dance concerts and Angels for Minis miniature horse benefits. Every few months we go to the Alameda Point Antiques Faire. And on this day, over sausage-and-egg croissant sandwiches, we spent a lot of time complaining about our progeny.

We’ve known a fair number of adoptive parents, and sometimes we compete to see whose family is the bigger disaster, but with Sarah and Jill the odds are even.

Small wisdoms: We’ve learned not to compare our teenagers to their teenagers. Our sons, Zane and Aidan, will always be polite to other adults. They will not, however, even try to be civil with us. In like manner, their kids always give us big hugs even when they’ve just finished arguing with their own parents.

I used to feel like I failed somehow when their teenagers went to a prom or got a job. This was also true of the kids of our friends the Sasbs. But it’s not a competition. We got to have avuncular pride when one of theirs got a driver’s license, and they got to have materteral

Having sunsets at 5 in the afternoon makes life seem shorter somehow. This calls for a day off, when I can still wake up before the sun.

pride when Zane earned his high school diploma. These amazing young persons are on their own paths. The small victories are the victories.

Small wisdoms: We teach each other that we cannot and should not live our children’s lives. For the first 18 years, Brian and I were the bumpers, kept them from running out in traffic, kept them from failing that algebra test, got them a haircut right before school pictures. But as they pass the threshold into technically adult, we learn to let go.

Yet, we never stop parenting. It’s a lifetime thing. We have learned that you cannot always drive the car of family. Sometimes you have to take the passenger seat. Early November: Before there can be a Thanksgiving, there must be a Thankstaking. Like taking a day off. There must be a time when we sit and breathe. A day to sleep in.

The sun may set early, but the dawn will come early, too.