45 Degrees

It’s a ten-minute walk to Solstice Park from my house. Harley the Dog and I wander there on the regular. Down the stairs, past the retaining wall covered in blackberries, past the teenagers hotboxing in their cars, into the trees, over a little wooden bridge. The park opens onto a plateau and there’s a stunning view of Puget Sound. Because it’s hard to find, it’s rare there are more than two or three other people around. Only when there’s a particularly spectacular sunset, or right around the solstice.  The park has an earthwork installation with three markers and three channels. Each marker indicates where to stand on the spring equinox, the fall equinox, and the solstice. At sunset when you stand on the marker, your shadow falls right down the opposing channel. I think of it like a tiny Stonehenge, a calendar marking the passage of the seasons.

I found the park shortly after moving to my house in West Seattle. Living in Seattle teaches you much about daylight, where it comes from, where it goes, but the markers on the ground at this park show how dramatic the difference is between the sun’s location in spring and its location in the fall. If it’s not 45 degrees between the extremes, it must be quite close to that. The northwest window in my front room illustrates the same tilt of the planet. The sun blazes in my north-facing windows in the summer, in the fall, while there is still plenty of light in my house, the sun does not cast a shadow on the floors in that same front room.

Here it is, September and the light is moving south. No wonder migratory birds and other populations head in that direction. The sun is leading the way. During this time, I walk the dog later and later in the morning. At some point, I turn the heat back on and if the dog is sleeping on the bed, as he sometimes does, when he hears the forced air kick in, he will head to the kitchen and lie in his bed in front of the heater vent. When I get up to make coffee, I will find him in with his nose pressed up against the warm grate.

When I was still married, when the long-distance relationship thing was still working for me, I would go to Austria for the winter, my ex-husband’s home country. (I realize how obscenely luxurious that sounds right now, I know, I know.) People who did not understand about daylight would ask me why I chose winter, not summer, to head to the mountains. The days there, though short, were bright with sunshine. A Kodachrome blue sky with acres of white snow reflecting that light all over everything. On days when there was no wind, I would take a book and go sit on a west-facing bench to read for an hour or two in the sun, not feeling the cold much at all. There are some things I miss about going to Austria on the regular, those bright winters are top of the list.

I suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). It’s heavier than end of summer nostalgia, the back-to-school (work) blues, or whatever that thing more balanced humans get when we tear September off the calendar. I manage it with exercise, a happy light at my desk, and way too much coffee. I added therapy when I was diagnosed with severe depression a few years back. That particular time in the hole included a supplement of meds – which I hated, really hated, though I do see the value in retrospect. Since crawling out of the darkness, I’ve written a book, got divorced, and landed a very good day job. The ground under my feet feels quite stable, even while the light fades.

This is not to say any of this is easy, not this year, especially. There’s an idiotic logistic thing – the main arterial in and out of my neighborhood is a bridge and that bridge has been closed since March 2020. People I used to see on the regular won’t come to my house, treating it like I live on an island when in fact, I do not. Yes, it takes 20 more minutes to get here. Okay then. There’s that, the fact that I am now a geographic inconvenience. And – you knew this was coming –  there’s the fucking plague.

The data is very good, particularly for my city. There is a 1/10,000 chance a vaccinated person (that’s me!) will get the virus. My neighborhood is over 80% double vaxxed and mask use is well adopted. My day-to-day risk is very low. I sent my lizard brain, which drives far too often these days, to get some more data. I’m more likely to die in a car crash. I’m more likely to get shot. Given that I suffer from depression, my suicide risk is much, much higher than that of my getting the virus. You hear that, lizard brain? Your city is quite safe. You can go do things. You really, really can.

Just so it’s clear, I’m nowhere near suicidal. I’m fine. Stand down. But also, I am super fucked up right now. You probably are too. We spent more than a year doing the right thing, getting vaxxed, staying home, wearing the mask, limiting our exposure, following good protocols around those at high risk, you know what you gave up, I don’t have to tell you. And for all that, this winter looks to be about the same as last winter. Socially isolating, full of needless deaths, politically divisive, driven by fear. I fucking hate that.

This morning, I made myself inventory the things I’ve accomplished in the last six months or so. I wanted to shake off that feeling of having done nothing useful for so long. I signed divorce papers, no small accomplishment. I taught a memoir class. I got a tattoo. I wrote an essay and shopped it until I found a good home for it (no, it’s not out yet).  I planted a vegetable garden and covered over my front yard to prep it for conversion to something way more sensible than 400 square feet of lawn. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. I’ve made multiple runs to the Goodwill to get rid of stuff that’s just taking up space in my house. I have not yet been called , but I completed volunteer screening to help resettle Afghan refugees. I continued to work on The Statesider and go to the gym and baked challah for Jewish New Year and hosted a faraway friend for a visit and and and okay, all this is good. You are living like a well-adjusted human in the world. Well done, human, for getting out of bed and living every day as though the world is not on fire, is not drowning, is not senselessly dying.

I am worried about how sad this winter will make me, how hard it will land when it arrives for real. I am worried about the days when the light never really comes up and I have been in my house alone for too long. I’m worried about how angry I am that we’re still here, even while yes, I know we’re not in exactly the same place. I’m worried about how this last year taught me that a whole lot of people don’t give one good god damn about anyone but themselves, I’m worried about how that has changed what I present to the world. Last year we did the work because we thought it would get us out, but it did not, and this year, we are broken from disappointment. I’m worried about how this time has changed all of us, about how we have so little left to give.

I turned on the radio and made coffee before I sat down to write this. I let the dog out, and when he came back in, he sat down on my right foot, leaning into me as he did on the day he told me he was my dog. This is what we will do this winter. Turn the radio on, reach down and pet the dog, make more coffee, watch for the sun to shift north again. This is what I have. The tilt of the planet and a list of things accomplished. Acting, if not believing, there’s hope that 45 degrees later, things will be better again.