Sunday strong

A breathing exercise.

You don’t see kids skipping rope on cloudy days. Or dogs leaping into a lakes. The sun makes us do things we wouldn’t otherwise do under grey skies, and in rain and especially at night.

I think one of the first things an addict does when they go clean is greet the sun.

At first, it was too much. I sat in a chair in my mother’s backyard, the sun in my face. I kept my head down because its rays exposed wet eyes and glistening cheeks. I had become a creature of darkness, slinking from one sunset to the next. The sun was to be avoided. It offered only exposure. Reckoning and revelation.

Today, I get up just as the sun sets the curtains aglow. My mother is already in the yard, face tilted up at the sky.

I join her.

“I’ll teach you a breathing exercise,” she says.

There’s nothing to do when facing the sun except watch animations on the inside of your eyelids. It’s the best kind of trigger, summoning days past. A sun-splashed field with a cheap plastic kite. Driving on gravel roads, a forgotten song on the radio.

“Breathe in.”

The sun takes me back to popsicle-stick riverboats sailing toward a dirty pond. It speaks of fresh-cut grass and a beagle named Sammy, forever running circles around me. Bicycle rides to visit ancient trees. And reading comic books in slanted sunbeams on the living room floor.

“Hold it in for seven seconds.”

I’m not sure what happened between then and nightfall — what drew the curtains. But it stayed dark for a very long time.

“And breathe out slowly.”

Hello, sun. What are we going to do with all your shine today?