The Melancholy Hour

AFTERNOONS are the saddest part of the day. I’ve wondered why that’s true since I was a child. Maybe it has to do with the position of the sun, gravity, bio-rhythms.

I doubt it, though.

It seems to me it must be that, compared to mornings, afternoons are the time of day when possibilities have run out. The day has taken its course, and whatever novelties you had hoped to encounter, goals you planned to achieve, breakthroughs you’d hoped to make, have turned up—or not. One is forced to face what one has made of one's time.

Mornings, on the other hand, are chock full of the unknown. The day is up for grabs!

For instance, this morning I shuffled out of the bathroom to find Huckle in his jammies, feet stomping, harmonica in hand. Never mind the slobber accompanying his haphazard riffing. He was harpin’ and cuttin’ a rug while Beans howled from his post on the couch.

It was a sight to behold!

When a day begins with such exuberance, one can be nothing but hopeful about what is to come. One imagines, “today our Aspie might surprise us with his adaptability."

It happens.

This kind of morning makes afternoon even more disappointing. By the time the low, winter sun is sinking behind Fargo’s leafless trees, a sense of disillusionment, even despair, is hard to shake. It can be so heavy that scrounging for a kazoo, or maybe even a jug, to reignite the morning’s hootenanny crosses ones mind.

The sun always sinks.


But one can make a fire, sit quietly and listen to Huckle and Sally Cat:

“Sally Cat, share or I’ll disappear you!”

“Huckle, you can’t disappear me right now! That’s an outside trick—it’s too cold to go out today.”

And, just like that, the afternoon is gone.