When I was a child in Texas I sometimes had to go to bed while it was still light. I guess this was toward the end of the school year. I’m sure we didn’t keep a 7:30 bedtime in summer! I remember once proffering that the ambient light conditions were not conducive to sound slumber. My ever-prepared mom whipped out a book and read the following:

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candlelight.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

Indeed. If Robert Louis Stevenson can survive an early bedtime, so you can you. It was also an introduction to the important lesson that life may suck, but then you can write a poem about it.

I hope parents in Dublin are armed with this instructive verse, as the days are incredibly long here. Today the sun rose at 4:59 AM and will set at 9:46 PM. The civil twilight, where the horizon is distinct, started at 4:09 and will end tonight at 10:36. We’re finding the long days trick us, and it’s always much later than we think it is. We’re staying up until dark, but the early dawn is hard to deal with! We’re waking up way too early.

This is a picture from last night around half ten.

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