I used to drive in the dark both ways.
That is what I remember most specifically about the winter commute. Not the distance, which was manageable, not the traffic, which was what traffic is. The dark. Leaving in the dark and coming home in the dark and the light being a thing that happened somewhere outside the parentheses of the workday, that existed during the hours I was indoors under fluorescent tubes that rendered everyone the same shade of slightly wrong. The sun was doing its work in my absence. I was doing my work in the sun’s absence. We were colleagues who never overlapped.
This January I watched the light change every day.
Not dramatically. January light does not change dramatically. It changes the way things change when you are paying attention to them closely, which is incrementally, almost imperceptibly, a minute more at the far edge of the afternoon, the evening arriving slightly later than yesterday, the kind of change that requires attention to detect and rewards attention with the particular satisfaction of noticing something real. I noticed it every day. I was there for it. The light and I were finally on the same schedule.
I did not know I had been missing the light.
I knew I was often sad in winter but I attributed it to winter, which is a legitimate thing to be sad in, and I did not think to ask how much of the winter sadness was the light deprivation of a woman who was inside under fluorescent tubes for the hours when the light was present, who saw the sun on weekends and called that enough because it was what was available and what was available was what enough meant.
This winter I went outside every day.
Not heroically. Just out. The walk in the grey morning, which is still light, even grey is still light, even the flat January sky is still the sky and being under it is different from being under ceiling tiles and I needed the difference more than I knew, had been needing it for twenty-five winters and calling the need something else, something more manageable, something that could wait until the weekend.
The light and I are on speaking terms now. We see each other daily. I had forgotten how much I needed that. I will not forget again.
