Dearest Rachel –
At this point in the calendar, you’d think this would be less of an issue; we’re already much closer to the vernal equinox than the winter solstice. We’re not limited to a bare handful of (mostly cloudy) hours in any given day before night falls back again, and I find myself driving home amid darkness.
But at the same time, we’re still not to the point where even half the day is actually day yet; the sun has yet to rise by six in the morning, and clocks out before six in the evening. And so, after a complete round trip of our usual path through the forest preserve (although not so usual as all that, since the last couple of weeks have had Lars and me deciding to turn back before reaching Willow Road in the north, as we’ve had to deal with the rugged terrain made that much more so by ice and snow), followed by a late and somewhat extended lunch together, the drive home is a slow progression to and through twilight into darkness.
Moreover, I was out that much longer last evening (for evening it became by the time I returned home, with no sign of the sun’s presence anywhere on the horizon). First, to stop by the folks’ place to check and see if they had gotten a delivery that needed to be brought into the house (as it happened, it didn’t arrive until more than an hour after I’d been by, but at least the deliveryman was kind enough to bring it into the house, saving me a trip back over there that much later), and then a fairly quick stop by a local grocery for a handful of essentials – and a few not-quite-essentials, but you know me. So by the time I was finally pulling into the driveway, it would have been hard to find, were it not for the trappings of modern society – the streetlight a door down from up, the lamppost in the driveway itself, and the light in the kitchen, in lieu of the porch light, for whatever reason.
I don’t believe that I deal with seasonal affective disorder as such, honey, but I have to admit that, after a while, the lack of light tends to get to one. If Christmas didn’t exist, those of us in the northern hemisphere would have to come up with a holiday to combat the gloom that envelopes us for way too much of the day. And while the sun is rising earlier and staying up later these days, the fact that we are out and about longer than it is can still wear on one, especially after months of these long nights already.
But for all that, these days don’t have the same sense to them as the many days in which I would both leave the house and return to you in the dead of night. Back then, it was a matter of having to go out and earn a living; and if it meant only seeing the daylit outdoors from an office window, well, at least we had the window to watch as the day began and ended while we were plugging away with budgets and analyses and whatnot. There was a cost to living that had to be paid, and the currency was in time and effort. The effort wasn’t so bad (until the merger, after which no effort seemed to be good enough), but the time…? It felt like watching the beauty of the days going by without being able to enjoy and participate in it. But it wasn’t as if I had a choice.
Ironically enough, there are times when I’m at home and – while the boys are watching anime in the family room – I’ll watch this or that channel vlogging the life of a Japanese salaryman. Not for any tips on where to go on our upcoming trips there; and certainly not out of nostalgia for life in the work farce. Quite the opposite, in fact; it’s something of a reminder of what life used to be and could be. These guys still head out in the wee hours, and come home in darkness (to an empty apartment, no less); I need to remember just how good I have things.
Way back during those first few months without you, you might remember that I related a free verse from my high school literary magazine that spoke of how aloneness ought to be, most importantly, “by choice.” For all that I dislike coming home in the dark on a day like yesterday, everything I did that day was by choice: I chose to spend an our at my ‘office’ at the folks; I chose to walk out in the open air with Lars (although that could be argued to be a mutually agreed-upon thing, perhaps); I chose to hang out and get pizza with him afterwards until it was well after five in the evening – not late enough that I would have been leaving my old workplace, but enough that some people would be on their way home, or out to dinner – I chose to check on the folks, even though they had requested my assistance; and I chose to take care of a few groceries before finally heading home. I could have skipped any or all of those – in some cases, making arrangements to do so beforehand, but still doable – and gotten home while it was still light. But I chose to stay out, and do all these things; there was no sense of obligation to any of it.
I may not like the darkness, honey, but if I choose to walk (or drive) in it, I’ve no cause for complain, only observation. Once again, I must thank you for allowing me the option to choose, even as I wish I could choose to have you with me. But for now, I’d ask you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, as I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 