Befriending The Shortening Days

I almost called this post “Surviving The Shortening Days” but then I realized: I don’t want to survive the dark when there are so many things to enjoy about it. Last night I experienced it for the first time this year: the sense (when leaving my house at 7:30) that it was wrong and unnatural to head out for the beginning of a social occasion when it is pitch-dark outside. Not that it was late, and not that I mind being out after dark. But come this time of year, when we have enjoyed a full summer of beach sunsets and late, light evenings, I require an adjustment period.

It’s no secret that Andrew and I tend to keep early hours - we both rise early, he to work, I because I am tethered to the sunlight and my natural energy mirrors its habits. Our average bedtime is 9:30 PM and we long ago gave up pretending to be bothered or embarrassed by this. I guess it’s one mark of the (temporarily) child-free, to have the option to go to bed early because you’ve already had plenty of time together. In fact, I prefer getting 8-9 hours of sleep per night, and I frequently achieve it. To my sleep-deprived parent-friends: I count good, long sleep as one solace of our prolonged state of infertility. It’s a definite perk!

By habit and by preference, I get sleepy a couple of hours after nightfall. In the summer this works in my favor. Summer’s long dog-stretch of daylight means I’m practically solar-charged - not remotely sleepy when the sun finally sets, and could easily stay up till 11. (Except when I started falling asleep at my own beach birthday party, before ten.) Juxtapose this with winter, when Andrew and I are curled up on our sofa yawning by seven o’clock, because it was already dark by the time I got home from work. Each autumn I fight against this natural inclination to go to sleep, as I’ve been doing all summer, shortly after dark.

Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate the chance that autumn and winter give to slow down and settle in; to hibernate, if you will. I like matching my own speed to nature’s speed, and I think that sinking into deeper rest will help preserve your immune system during a time of year when everyone’s seems to be on the fritz. I wrote all about it last spring, as we collectively lumbered out of hibernation.

However, unless you plan to go to bed at 7:30 (and I don’t), the darker evenings can feel very long and honestly, a bit grim. We really love a movie night or catching up on a favorite TV show in our house, but I begin to feel stir-crazy after too much television. I don’t want to spend all the spare time of winter compensating for the longer, lazier darkness with more hours on the couch, zoning out. Additionally, last winter was my first working a job that kept me from being out as much in the sunlight, and my vitamin D levels and energy suffered more than I expected. This is also something I’d like to be mindful of going into this cozier-dozier time of year. The idea isn’t to destroy the beautiful rest and seasonality of this portion of the year, but to navigate it graciously and stay alive to its beauty and the space it provides.

As a person who is greatly motivated by small, pleasurable things, and finds a significant uptick in everyday happiness by indulging in them, I thought I’d sketch an outline of the ways I’m planning to stay wider awake (literally and figuratively) throughout the dark season.

---

The one thing I keep thinking about is how much time we spend on our couch in the evening - we have never had a tv in our bedroom, so any movie or shows are watched downstairs. And because we have a little house with nowhere else to be but on the couch, anything I do, from knitting to reading to cuddling the cats to Facetiming my sister on the opposite coast, happens on the couch. And ever since moving into this house, which hasn’t a real dining room, you know what’s also happened? We eat meals in the living room while sitting on the couch too. I’m not ashamed of this - it’s convenient, it’s fairly comfortable, and it’s the only option when we have more than two people over for dinner. But in this season where so many hours are spent at home, resting, I don’t want to spend 4.5 hours straight, wedged into the corner of the blue velvet couch like I’ve put down roots there.

So I’m staging a coupe. I’m planning to do what we must (not tolerate clutter, for one thing) to keep the tiny kitchen table clear, and to sit down at it for meals. And I won’t stop there. I’m also planning to thrift or otherwise find a couple of small, round tablecloths to go over this table, so that we don’t have to notice that it has doubled as my art desk, a mail-table, a coatrack, and a plant nursery over the several years it has acted as everything but a functional dining space.

The second bit of my plan goes hand-in-hand with the table thing, and that is to light and use candles - the good one, the stumpy ones, the dollar store ones, the beeswax ones - each evening. I have always loved the reckless abandon with which I light candles at Advent, and the good, golden cheer they provide. Everyone looks handsomer/prettier in candlelight, you feel better about things, and it’s impossible not to prefer darkness than endless summer sun. Candles don’t just push back the dark; they draw it close around you and tuck it in just so, like a blanket.

The third bit of my intentions goes like this: to perform a closing shift in the kitchen - together - immediately after dinner. Because we eat in the living room and because we are cozy and comfy and because the dishwasher is somehow always full (a full, clean dishwasher is forever the most problematic chore to me), and furthermore - because I only just finished cooking a very delicious dinner - I procrastinate about the kitchen. The trouble is, of course, that I don’t feel any more like doing it at 9:30 when we peel ourselves off the couch and think about bed. There are the dishes to do, the leftovers-as-lunches to pack, and the counters to wipe. Sometimes I leave the dishes for the morning (I know, I know) and when I wake up - guess what? I still don’t feel like performing this duty, and furthermore the kitchen is still full of last-night’s-dinner smells which I hate. It’s such a bad idea but I tell myself it will be different next time.

So far, the evenings; I like the way this ritual of sitting down at a table for dinner (something I forget that I miss doing) grounds us in a moment of gratitude, of quietness, and of connection. And although it sounds like a little bit of a faff with the tablecloth and everything…what else am I going to do with that ten minutes of clearing off and setting up? Watch one-third of a forgettable episode of New Girl? Sounds important…

The rest of my plot is to avoid becoming a winter-days hermit. I love being married and I love my husband and I love the friendship between us, and I love staying home together! I love that because we have each other, I don’t have to stay out in social settings, hoping to meet someone to stay in with. But the biggest wrong-assumption I used to have when I was single, was that being married somehow eliminates the need for social time outside of our marriage. To be honest, the marriages I admire are rooted in community together and as individuals, making the husband and wife stronger, more affectionate, and more well-rounded than those who have become isolated within their homes. I am a better wife, a better community-member, and a better woman toward myself, when I’m intellectually, socially, and creatively connected. I already know that I tend to be quieter and dozier this time of year and while that’s okay, I do not want to be someone who feels like dark means bedtime, and won’t leave her house after 5:30.

I want to be hospitable and generous, and open my hands regarding how this looks. Whether it’s a splashy event like the Friendsgiving I roasted a whole duck and crammed eight people in our living room, or calm and understated like having a couple of new people over for brunch, living with open doors is something I want out of this fall and winter. Everyone could use a little more warmth. Everyone could use a world that has shrunk drowsily till it’s a manageable and cider-scented size, about the shape of a small townhouse. But as much as I love having people at ours, because of the fact we don’t have any kids it is sometimes easier for people to have us over their place instead. I love that, but I also don’t want families to always bear the brunt of hosting simply because their kids need to go to sleep or be able to play in a familiar room, or run around a big back yard. I want to get better at saying, “Hey, let’s hang out, I’ll make a cauldron of soup and all the sides - we’ll bring it over and clean up after. All you have to do is open the door.” Of course this will probably happen most successfully pre- and post-holiday season, but it’s a nice intention, and something that applies year-round. Make friends! Have them over! Say yes to park picnics and weird, collaborative dinners. Or, if it’s more helpful, sign up for Meal Trains or that delightfully-strange “lasagna love” list, and leave some food at the door for a person in need.

Then, I intend to plan a few creativity-dates across the dark season for inspiration and delight. I love a watercolor session with a friend, or a time when we simply meet up to work on our individual art forms in companionable silence. I love these times because they require so little of either party - just their company - yet it boosts my own creativity three-fold to see a friend’s imagination at work. Last holiday season Christen and I met to have dinner and make wreaths out of the scrappy trimmings of fir and pine she’d gathered from a Christmas-tree lot. It is one of my favorite winter memories, and I want more of that sort of thing this time around.

This naturally leads into another thing I love and want for this time of year, which is to challenge and engage my brain by learning. I am never happier than when learning something new, and I’m never more frustrated than when under-challenged. I suspect there has got to be some shred of this quality in most others, but even if it’s unique to me, it’s there and needs attention. If I can afford it, I would love to take a 6-week pottery class at a studio near me. It’s actually significantly cheaper than I expected, so I will keep my eye on this. If pottery doesn’t work out, I will be continuing to teach myself how to knit (something I’m still a beginner in), and am also finding myself super curious about playing with the possibilities afforded by papier-mâché. And, should all else fail, we have a couple home-improvements like painting a couple rooms and replacing a sliding glass door that could fit the bill.

Last but not least, some physical plans. Largely, the whole can be summed up in this: to strengthen my body, and remember to get 15-30 minutes of sunshine daily. Okay, ideally I’d like a lot more sunshine than this, but in the colder, darker months it can be hard to come by! I’m typically pretty good about getting in sunlight because I’m also starved if I disconnect from nature, (sunshine + nature: two things which often go hand-in-hand) but I foresee plenty of times when my outdoor/nature hours will be on cloudy days, and then the days the sun is actually shining, I’m nowhere to be found. Since I’ve taken back up the gym for strength-training, it’s terribly convenient to pretend a hike by upping the treadmill incline and getting my heart pumping. And that’s great and all - tremendous! - but it isn’t a substitute for feeling some wan November sunlight on your bare face and remembering you’ve got a lot in common with plants. Notably, that you both are fed by a giant burning star that is miraculously positioned juuuuuuuuust correctly, so that you feel comforted, not singed. And to finish off the whole “your physical self needs treats too,” I’m going to keep up my bobbed cut throughout the winter because there is nothing - truly nothing - to make you feel like a new human, than having your hair freshly trimmed. Inversely, there is nothing more likely to have you questioning your humanity than being all frizzy and static-laden, and looking roughly like a medieval peasant.

And there we have it: a proposed sequence of ways to tell the darkness, “I love you but it isn’t yet time for bed.” Let’s recap the things I intend so that when it gets to be the real gulag days, I can reference this list and see how it’s all going. Ready? My dark-season intentions are:

to keep the tiny kitchen table clear, and to sit down at it for meals

to light and use candles - the good one, the stumpy ones, the dollar store ones, the beeswax ones - each evening

to perform a closing shift in the kitchen - together - immediately after dinner

to avoid becoming a winter-days hermit

to plan a few creativity-dates across the dark season for inspiration and delight

to challenge and engage my brain by learning

to be hospitable and generous, and open my hands regarding how this looks

to strengthen my body, and remember to get 15-30 minutes of sunshine daily

to keep up my bobbed cut throughout the winter

I feel good about this! I always feel good with a plan. The things I do not plan to do are go to sleep at 8 PM for lack of anything better to do, hide away from society because “it’s dark out,” and forgo all physical activity until I feel like a piece of mochi. You know what I mean.

Love,

Rachel