The day we turn the clocks forward is one of my favorite days of the year. Despite the fact that everyone in my family oversleeps for at least the next two days, thanks to the darkness at the time of our respective alarms, it seems like everyone is a little nicer when it’s still light out close to 7 p.m. – you know, the flip side of looking outside at 4:30 p.m. in November to see that the streetlights are already on.
“Why am I so crabby?” I’ll think to myself around that time in the late fall. And then I remember: I feel like a nocturnal animal, rooting around in the dark, pushing a cart into the grocery store instead of foraging for forest food.
Now, lighter days mean lighter moods.
That said, I did get thinking about the concept of time moving rapidly forward and waiting for no one, much like Daylight Saving Time. It happens, and you adjust, for better in this case; sometimes for worse, in the case of Central Standard Time.
The broader meaning of time change came when I was visiting Tribune Tower this week, that truly magnificent building just off the Chicago River at the gateway to the Michigan Avenue corridor. From the time I was in journalism school, I wanted nothing more than to eventually work at what some people dubbed “Mother Tribune.”
Although I never achieved that goal, I was lucky to write (and still do) for the paper and the organization, thrilled enough for a byline and the occasional visit to the fourth-floor features desk.
In a few months, reporters will be moved out of Tribune Tower, as will employees of WGN Radio, another one of my favorite spots in the city, because of the totally Chicago-tastic showcase studio. Time marches on, things adjust — in this case, employees will move to a new building while the Tower goes luxury condo.
I imagine I will subtly scowl at Tribune Tower when it’s finally a residential and mixed-use development, even if they save the preservation-protected facade and main lobby, with its pieces of architectural history embedded in the walls. (If you don’t know about or haven’t seen it, check it out!)
Time changes. There’s the day when it dawns on you that your 21-year-old son may not live at home again full-time, just as a visitor, as you did when you returned home after college and found your old bedroom charmingly quaint and already in your rear-view mirror.
Time changes. You go to a spaghetti dinner fundraiser and wonder if, 20 years from now, there will be spaghetti dinner fundraisers with food served up by veterans or service organization leaders and coffee that you pour yourself into Styrofoam cups.
Time changes, half the time with more daylight seeping in, sparking contentment and half-the time, slowly receding.
Time changes. At some point, maybe I’ll figure out how to change the digital clock in the car.
Lynn Petrak is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.
