It’s an ordinary Wednesday.  You’ve done a hard day’s work on your farm.  You’ve fed the animals and put them up for the night.  You’ve fed your children and tucked them in.  You’ve kissed everyone goodnight and drifted into sleep yourself – on that ordinary Wednesday, September 2nd, 1752, England.

The sunrise awakens you the next morning.  And it is Thursday, September 14th, 1752, England.  Overnight you lost eleven days from your month and your year.  September 3rd to September 13 simply disappeared.

Historically, for those eleven dates in September of 1752 in England, no one was born, no one died, no one committed a crime or was arrested, no one did any house work or farm work or business, no one went hungry or became sick.

It sounds a bit like the plot of the play and movie “Brigadoon” – where a whole town in Scotland disappears completely every night for 100 years … and only true love can break through the spell.  But this reality of the lost eleven days in 1752 is not nearly so romantic.  It was simply a pragmatic calendar adjustment –from Julian to Gregorian – to bring England (and its colonies – including us in the New World) into alignment with the rest of Europe.

Still, there were some accounts of protesters taking to the streets to get their eleven days back.  Some believed it shortened their lives.  I suspect a great many dust-ups arose relative to business contracts and rents and such.  But in the end, the world survived.  And birthdays got celebrated and weddings took place and babies were born and crops were harvested on time.  The moon moved in its phases. The sun rose and set.  The lost eleven days were soon forgotten – relegated to “once-upon-a-time” stories told to children and the odd “remember-when” clucked over by older generations.

I understand a bit about “lost days.”  I feel as if my entire summer of 2024 has gone missing.  From June 22nd until now, my memory of it is not much more than a messy blur of pain and discomfort, frustration and confinement … and yet it has also been made noble and fine with unbelievable compassion and kindness shown to me.  It has been a true reaffirmation of the goodness of people and the faithfulness of friends.  

Still, the days are gone.  My own “eleven days” (more accurately, eight times eleven days) are lost to me.  And I sometimes want to march in the streets with those folks in 1752 who chanted to get their days back.

And yet, I suspect I don’t really want those particular lost days back.  I want days like I had before.  The days I expected to have.  And then I think about all I’ve learned and received during my lost summer days.  And I would never want to lose that or trade any of it away.  Perhaps what I really want is for my heart and memory to simply accept it all as it is, with no regrets.

Writer (and wise woman) Anne Lamott has considered emotional loss in terms of the physical, and concludes with this:  “It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” That resonates particularly well with me now, since I have a left leg that won’t heal properly and a left foot that refuses to behalf itself.

But, in the end, I suspect I will learn to forget the loss.  Or give it proper perspective.  Or perhaps I will truly embrace it.  Perhaps I shall even become a woman “of intrigue and lost days” … who lives with rowdy dogs, walks with a wood-and-brass cane, and dances with a mysterious limp.