Loving the Light
Notes from the Prairie: I Wonder column #50
This morning, I sit half-awake on the couch with my computer on my lap. Lacking energy to open the blinds, I face them in semi-darkness. Then I wonder why I love the light.
Oh, I know there’s a biochemical reason. Decades ago, after reading about seasonal affective disorder (SAD), an illness in which some people become depressed in winter, I bought a therapy light. I call it my happy light.
Summer mornings I freewrite on this couch, but each fall morning as the days shorten, I move my laptop to one side of my desk and pull the lamp within 24 inches of my eyes. I create a new document in my Scrivener writing program and start typing. Every random thought I capture flows from my head through my fingers to my keyboard. This freewriting and the light are both therapeutic. The therapy light increases my serotonin, raising my mood, and reduces melatonin, making me less sleepy.
This practice brightens my inner darkness throughout the winter. If I begin too late in the fall and am already blue, I begin to brighten after a week.
My love of light is more than biochemical. Even in summer, I love light. Eating breakfast on summer mornings I raise the blinds, gaze through the window on the other side of my oak table and take pleasure in viewing the neighborhood under the morning sun. If the angle of the sun is just right, the second-story windows of one home suddenly transform into glowing rectangles of reflected sun. My heart lightens in response.
Looking through that window as I breakfast on gray days has the opposite effect. The gloom from outside invades me.
At my desk I enjoy the soft glow of three battery-powered candles. Sometimes, if I've become tight and tense, I lift my eyes to their gentle light. My breathing deepens; my racing brain slows. I also enjoy occasional candlelight dinners in dimly lit restaurants, but at home I prefer well-lit nights. I resist mood lighting with only small, bright areas for reading.
In winter, when darkness reigns during our evening meal, I pull the blinds to lock out the darkness. Sometimes I light a candle to add to the light from the ceiling. In December, we light an additional candle each week on our Advent wreath atop the table. The flickering flames add cheer to my meal.
When we downsized five years ago, I enjoyed our new home without thinking much about its lighting. Then, to save energy, we replaced the incandescent bulbs in the recessed lights in all ceilings. We counted the bulbs and then ordered LEDs — 96 of them! And that did not include the six lights over the bathroom mirror. I then recognized our home’s lighting had attracted me.
My mother never mentioned loving light. However, I remember that she disapproved of her parents-in-law’s lighting decisions. Although in those days electricity was considered “penny cheap,” Grandpa and Grandma Addink didn’t turn on the lights at sundown, not even for guests. On visitor nights, Grandpa, Dad and my uncles sat in the enclosed front porch without overhead lights long after every vestige of sunlight had vanished. Their cigarettes and cigars glowed in the dark.
Except for smoking, the women did the same in the adjacent dining room. But when they could no longer see each other’s faces, one of the aunts switched on the light.
I make different lighting choices. My larger rooms have two switches, allowing me to choose half-lighting or full lighting. I click both switches immediately when the sunlight dims one iota. No low light for me, thank you very much.
Sitting here wondering and thinking, I realize that I still don’t have a full answer to why I love light. From the depths of memory, a childhood Sunday school verse rises: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”*
Hmm. I wonder if that begins to answer my question more fully.
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* John 1:5 NIV
Carol Van Klompenburg is a writer living in Pella, Iowa. She is currently at work on a second book about aging. She can be emailed at carolvk13@gmail.com. Her website is carolvanklompenburg.com.