Winter Sunlight - Finding the Warm Spot

Winter Sunlight

I'm a summer person through and through.

Every year when winter arrives, I have to work a little harder. Grey skies make me restless and a run of overcast days can leave me feeling almost suffocated.

I've tried all sorts of things over the years. Even skiing, despite being spectacularly bad at it.

What I've learned is that winter becomes much easier when I stop fighting it.

Instead of wishing for summer, I try to pay attention to the things that make winter feel a little lighter. Cozy blankets. Early nights. Good books. Soul food simmering on the stove. Candlelight in the evenings.

And perhaps most of all, winter sunlight.

There is a particular kind of sunlight that appears in winter. Lower in the sky, softer. It slips through windows and stretches across old timber floors and worn carpets. It settles on books, kitchen tables and quiet corners of the house.

Perhaps I notice winter sunlight because I spend so much of winter looking for it, so much so that my husband will often say I am like a cat searching for the sunny spots around the house.

The other day I saw a photograph from another maker's account. It wasn't a product photo. It was simply her front porch, where she sits with a cup of tea in the winter sun.

I understood it immediately.

Not because I love winter, but because I know exactly what it feels like to chase those moments of warmth when the days are cold and grey.

We might live in different towns and lead very different lives, yet when winter arrives many of us seem to do the same thing. We find the warm spot, the sunny chair, the patch of sunlight on the porch. We turn our faces towards the light and linger there for a while.

In summer, sunlight is everywhere, we barely think about it.  In winter, a patch of sunshine on the floor can feel like a small gift.

Winter asks different things of us.  Less rushing.  More noticing. More acceptance of the season as it is.  Perhaps that's why candles belong so naturally to winter, not because winter is dark and needs fixing, but because both candlelight and winter sunlight invite us to slow down enough to notice what is already there.

By late afternoon the sunlight has moved on.

The warm patch on the floor disappears and the room feels different somehow.

The fire is lit, the lights come on and another winter evening begins. 

Tomorrow, if the clouds allow, it will return for a little while and  I'll probably find myself sitting there again with a cup of tea.

It seems many of us do.

We find the warm spot and linger there for a while.

Notes

Music: Pathos — Ludovico Einaudi