Spending time with a newborn we have often spoken about circadian rhythms. We watch this small being wake, eat, poop, pee and sleep. He has not arrived with an apparent preprogrammed clock. Slowly he is more wakeful, more fussy at some moments, and settled and sleepy at others. As parents Zoë and Mike aim to find a delicate balance.
In my life in Virginia I have my habits, the times I sleep, wake, walk, eat, and work. My schedule relates to the landscape and to the season. Zoë has always told me one of the things she loved about the time change in the autumn was that we ate dinner earlier. Even when I am in the city I am drawn to get outside in the velvety shadowy dusk. I need to be free to slip between the awareness of daylight and the certainty of night.
It’s dusk, dearest. (In passing, isn’t ‘dusk’ a lovely word? I like it better than twilight. It sounds so velvety and shadowy and—and—dusky.) In daylight I belong to the world; in the night to sleep and eternity. But in the dusk I’m free from both and belong only to myself—and you.
–L.M. Montgomery, from Anne of Windy Poplars, Oxford City Press, 2012