On Darkness, On Light

I have been using the light all wrong. 

The winter. The cold. The gray-dark. I have that Seasonal Affective Disorder thing where the energy leaks out of me, despite all my best efforts—the walks outside (no matter what the weather), the daily yoga, the cozying up of the house. A few years ago, my daughter introduced me to Danish Hygge, where you burn candles and toss cushy throw pillows around the room and sip hot tea and set a pot of steaming orange peels and cinnamon sticks on the stove until it turns to mush. It helps. It doesn’t help. 

My husband got me one of those light therapy lamps, and I blast it in the afternoons after I get home from work at the library, what feels like the peak grayness of the day. Under the glare, I sit at my desk and try to write, but mostly I’m blinking at the window, the gloomy backyard, the flopped over brown flowers, the frozen birdbath, the clutter of dead leaves on the dead lawn. My thoughts are muddled 

a story I read in the news about a young woman who lives in a homeless camp and how she went into labor and a police officer ticketed her for sitting under an overpass, and now I can’t get the picture out of my mind, her sprawled legs, her flip flops, one hand lifted helplessly, 

and the other day at the library, the old man who wandered into the youth department, lost, and I cheerfully led him out, chattering about how confusing the library layout is, the large space and all of the various hallways, and who wouldn’t get lost. But now I’m thinking of him out in the parking lot, shuffling between the cars. Should I have followed him out there? Asked him if he needed help? What do we owe one another and why doesn’t this stupid light work?

Because you’ve been using it wrong, says a friend. 

We’re at a Winter Solstice Party, and the talk has turned to the weather (the clouds, the dreariness, the GRAAAAAYYYYY), commiserating about our mutual SAD-ness. The trick, he tells me, is to turn the light on first thing in the morning to mimic the sun rising. 

Huh, I say. Can it be this easy? 

I vow to try it the next morning, but the next morning I forget, a quiet, bleary-eyed moment with my coffee, the dog curled beside me, the orange peels and cinnamon sticks simmering on the stove. The sun surprises me before I can mimic it, the pinkening sky

the growing blue, so real and bright you can almost believe the young woman was given a blanket and lifted gently into an ambulance, 

and the lost man made it home.