A Perfect Sunday Morning
A few weeks ago a colleague of mine mentioned that he'd been feeling a bit off. Not depressed, just felt sort of stuck. My mother used the phrase "rat race" to describe how she was feeling around the same time.
It is the seasonal dark before the seasoal dawn. The tail end of these long winters miserly dispensing such short days. Those of us who live pretty far north are just about exhausted by lack of sunlight. Around the middle of March, quite suddenly, the daylight in the afternoon starts to strech out and soon thereafter the mornings begin earlier. It happens over a short period of time. The plants respond within two days, and so too the humans. I don't mean to get all Emily Dickenson writing about nature and spring and Seasonal Affective Disorder...well maybe I do.
I woke up at my usual ungodly early hour this Sunday and only had to wait about an hour for the light to come. I am on my balcony now--coat and scarf on top of my pajamas, cup of coffee keeping me company. Michael is upstairs putting the last coat of paint in the bathroom before we'll take a walk in the Vondelpark this morning and watch the dogs out and about on their first run of the day. Across the courtyard are these 20-somethings in the hotel annex from across the street. They are huddled on the balcony smoking cigs. They've been up all night. It is almost 8:00 a.m. and they are still going strong, making jokes and conversation. One boy is talking in English about how he gets up at 5:30 every morning to go running. One girl is giggling nervously at everything she hears. The crowd retreated inside save for two who sneaked a first kiss--runner boy and giggle girl. I was peeking at them through a shrub on my balcony.
Those days for me seem so long ago but the memories are vivid. It's so nice to witness it happening to someone else. The endless energy people in their early 20s have. How cool and grown up they feel..renting hotel rooms and staying up all night smoking cigs and drinking cheap alcohol. Fabulous.
I remember being 19 or 20 and going to Chicago with a girlfriend for the weekend. It was summer. We stayed in an aparmtent rented by a few guys who were recent college graduates. They somehow scored quite a nice place on South Shore Drive. They had a party. We spent the night. In the morning when I woke up, I stepped outside on the fire escape and dreamed that I would live a life in the city, where I would hear faint conversations, radios...smell breakfast, all this life surrounding me. It gave me such a calm feeling and to live that dream today gives me the same sense of calm. I love these hours where the night owls and the early birds converge; where babies are being fed their first meal at the same time the party people are having their last.
Michael just came outside to tell me how ridiculous I look in my winter coat and PJs and to suggest maybe I am too optimistic regarding the arrival of spring. But it's not the temperature, it's the light. And the state of mind it perpetuates.
