At 6:01 am this morning, traveling Cousin Eddie arrived in his beat-up RV for a 6-month visit.
You remember Eddie (Randy Quaid) from the 1989 movie “Christmas Vacation” with light-bulb-happy Clark “Sparky” Griswold (Chevy Chase). Now, that was a movie with some electricity – very illuminating.
On March 20, 2013, at 6:01 am Dallas time, the vernal equinox arrived with Cousin Eddie to light up our world. (Of course, Cousin Eddie is a made-up movie character, but the vernal equinox is not made up – it is high up and right on time.)
“Vernal” means “spring,” and “equinox” means “equal night.” This is one of the two days in the year when the sun stands directly over the equator (that big cowboy belt around the center of the earth). Because the sun over the equator on the equinox is looking right down at the equator, its rays are distributed equally to the northern and southern hemispheres. The equinox day itself is as close to equal in light and dark as any day can be. As such, the day is one of great equality for those residing on the surface of our planet.
So, go out and bask in the uniform warmth of our star and share its encouraging rays with a friend.
And, while you’re there, recite this equinox couplet, as you wander hatless through the fields of spring blooms:
Our sun plays no favorites in its sway
But favors us all, equally this day.
In the fall, you can hum this same two-some of lines, because the other day-equal-night day in the year is the autumnal equinox, which occurs in the fall.
This year the autumnal equinox will fall on September 22nd. Again, we can bask with perfect equity in the same amount of “golden bennies from the sky.”
“Golden bennies from the sky” is a happily remembered college phrase for that welcome first day of the early northern spring when the golden beams (bennies) of the sun finally shone through the gray clouds of winter, melting our frigid dispositions and exciting us to run onto the university lawns, throw Frisbees and generally act a little crazed.
Spring had sprung and I guess we had sprung with it.
Which isn’t a bad thing — to have a little fun in the warm sunshine of spring, to let our hearts be warmed by nature, and to be bighearted to those around us. Cousin Eddie was bighearted. He had a springtime smile in the icy snows of winter, because I think he’d learned the lesson of the vernal equinox:
Sun equinox high brings an easy smile
That shines as bright inside for winter’s child.
However it is said, perhaps the lesson to be learned from the joys of nature on this first day of spring is to remember and share those joys when nature has turned dreary and drab and is looking for us to play the sun.
Enjoy the bright days of equinox high,
Remember in turn your days in the sun.
And share the light shining there within you,
To brighten a child’s winter Sunday run.
I like Cousin Eddie.
He may not have much.
But he sure seems to have fun and such.
Winter, spring, summer or fall, don’t seem to matter at all.
When Cousin Eddie smiles out that beat-up RV, looking for a stall.
Maybe I should learn from that high-up sun’s equinox arc.
And always leave a place for him to park.
Thanks, Cousin Eddie.
Keep an eye up to the sky,
a smile for a greeting,
and the door open –
for a friend.
Thanks, Sun,
Grandpa Jim