The clocks change. What to do with the hour we get back.

But I want to talk about the hour we get back, rather than the inconvenience, because I think we systematically waste it in a way that is worth noticing.

The hour that the clocks give back is a Sunday morning hour. The dark comes earlier in the evening, but the gift arrives in the morning — the morning that used to begin at 7 now begins at 6, which means the morning that felt like it belonged to the night still feels, briefly, like morning. There is more light at the start of the day. The children often wake at the new 6, which is the old 7, and the house begins before it usually does.

In New York, where I live, I try to use this hour as a kind of ceremony for the season. Not formally — we don't gather and announce the ritual. But I make something for breakfast that takes time. I put music on instead of the television. I don't open my phone until after breakfast. And I try to go slowly, because the extra hour is the universe's way of offering an alternative pace, and alternative paces are rare enough that I try to take them when they appear.