My friend Becky names her years. You know, the year of health, or growth, or whatever, so I'm following suit this year and deeming 2007 the Year of Light. (Besides that sounds way cooler than the year of the boar!) Our lives are regulated by light. I see the sunrise almost every morning as I rise for school in the dark. One of my new favorite children's books, How to Start a Day, is all about that actually - greeting the sun each morning. I feel it is hugely important to fill daylight with activity, because after dark our solar power will fire up three light bulbs, which isn't enough to trick my body into staying awake. Raph tries with card games, and music and candle-lit dinners, but bed beckons me when the sun has lost sight of us. I don't mind. I've come to love rising and falling with the sun and I'm prefectly alright with sleeping nine hours.
And since we're expecting, the year of light seems appropriate still. His first light. We're about to see the light. I can concoct all sorts of plays on words to justify the name. Speaking of names, two of my favorite Hawaiian names are about light. And boy were those Hawaiians poetic. Malio for example means "earliest morning light as it pierces the shadow of night." And Nikili means "to glimmer through, as light through a small opening." Those are good meanings.
I'm looking forward to seeing what 2007 will be for Becky.