Tell Us About ... Sunshine

I have been asked if I'd like to participate in the Global Writing Challenge on the second Thursday of the month.
My posts will go live a little early (to avoid collision with the silent films), so if the posts of the others are not live yet, please check back later.
The current membership consists of Deb’s World, Suzy Turner, Within a World of My Own, Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After, Marsha in the Middle, Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa, and me. It's fun to learn how differently everyone interprets a topic.
You can play along and link up with us!
If that's too short notice for you, maybe next time? The prompt for July will be "Dance".

This month's prompt is "Sunshine". Ouch.
I'd like to start by describing a cartoon by one of my favorite cartoonists, Graham Annable aka Grickle. My favorite are his vampire cartoons.
I don't share artists' work without permission, but you can find the cartoon here.

You see a vampire sitting on his couch holding a portable game console. Behind him there's a strange looking armor, his wolf is sleeping on the rug, a side table holds a skull lamp. Everything is grey, the only colors are those of the console and of the warm light shining from it - and the caption reads "The only reason he played Animal Crossing was to walk through the sunshine again."

Awww 😍
But, uhm, yeah, I'm not that vampire. I'm the kind of vampire who doesn't flee the sunshine by necessity, but out of conviction.
I was the "shadow child" under the tree at the local pool while my friend impersonated a sausage on the grill because she loves the sun.
I'm the one who lets the shades down when others pull them up.
Drag me into the sun and I might be hissing at you - or possibly dissolving in a cloud of dust like Hammer's Dracula.
If you have been around for a while, you already know that I'm very much drawn to the moon instead of the sun even if I won't find me flying in front of a full moon.

What you may not know, however, is that I don't have anything against the sun as such, not that I had ever given that a real thought before.
There's no question about our needing the sun. Our planet needs the sun for light, warmth, gravitation, vitamin D - in short, for life, and a lot of different cultures already knew that a long time ago, only they credited solar deities and built solar cults around their beliefs.

Goddess Sunna at the V&A,
public domain via Wikipedia

We all know the stories about ancient people panicking during a solar eclipse. I experienced one full solar eclipse myself, and although it was raining and we didn't get to see anything, the darkness and the silence gave me an idea of how much scarier that must have felt to people who didn't understand what was happening there, not knowing if the sunlight would return.

Trundholm Sun Chariot
Picture by Nationalmuseet, CC BY-SA 3.0

When I was a kid, my yellow pencil was always the shortest. I absolutely loved drawing a big sun into the corner of every classic "landscape with house" picture. Not a full sun, just one like this here - yes, this is practically a copy of the picture I remember drawing at my friend's house once at the tender age of 8 or 9.
Okay, not really, I only had felt-tips available, but no light blue for the sky and no brown for a tree, and filling out the grass wouldn't have worked for the flowers, so I had to make some small changes. Can't say my drawing abilities have much improved since then as I'm usually not a fan of tiny houses. Maybe it's a fairy house. You get the idea, that's what counts.
As you can see my suns always had a wide smile and the alternating short and long rays.

Suns (and sunflowers which don't have their name for nothing) didn't just turn up in my drawings, though, they also made their way into my jewelry creations.

Center picture via pxhere

So I guess you could say I appreciate the sun as a life giver and inspiration and love the concept of sunshine as long as I don't have to be in it directly myself (and for that I even have my medication as a valid excuse).
I think that's a pretty good compromise 🌞

Now let's see what the others have to tell us (Debbie is still travelling).

Suzy writes about her changing relationship with sunshine and why she appreciates it far more now than she ever did before.

Sally shares sunshine-inspired outfits and handmade jewelry.

Leslie packed a little El Paso sunshine in her pocket for their trip to the UK.

Even though her students begged her not to sing, Marsha loves music.  This time around, she’s writing about songs she loves that mention sunshine!

Amy writes about her first year of freedom to chase the sunshine in all four seasons.


And now you. Tell us about "Sunshine" and link up with us!

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