Out Like a Lamb

For today, readers, let us turn our attention to a little-acknowledged but widely-pervasive condition called SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER, or SAD. It's a state in which many of us find ourselves during the interminable winter months when living in Northerly latitudes. There is little sunlight, and when there is it doesn't last long; and the conditions in general make even the simplest machinations of daily life take on the quality of an epic battle.

This is a time of year when people take vacations or, in the extreme, commit suicide. And really, who could blame either one?

I discovered that I suffer from SAD while an undergraduate living in the wild, romantic, and forbidding landscape of downeast Maine. The windswept rocky coast passes most of the year obscured in a gray mantle of winter, a situation punctuated only by a brief and mild and perfect summer, before a riotous weekend of autumn color. After that, all warmth and color is ruthlessly smothered for another 9 months. Chicago isn't much different, except that people work like slaves and because they MUST get to work, a patina of salt encrusts everything. Otherwise, we too only get about 43 minutes of daylight for months on end.

Like so many other things, especially serious illnesses, one often does not realise the severity of a condition until there is some abatement of that condition. For me, sweet relief came on Saturday, when the temperature reached a near-record 57 degrees Fahrenheit in Arlington Heights, Illinois. I flung open the windows, got my car washed, and felt SUNLIGHT and WARMTH on my face as I performed such glorious tasks as running out for a Cuban torta at Pancho's Burritos for lunch, or shopping at Wal-Mart.

Driving home from my Saturday errands, I cranked up the radio, sang at the top of my voice, and rolled down both front seat windows so that the wind blew freshness and sunshine into the car, into my lungs, and into my hair. In a moment or two, I was given just a little nourishment, the tiniest taste, a morsel, a dram of sustenance. The coming of spring, the literal and metaphorical rebirth, is always just around the corner. And this year, the added flavor to it all is my move to South America, the knowledge that is it summer there now, and it is always summer, and the warmth and the wind and the light will be the rule instead of the exception.