Come December in New England, when all the trees in our backyard are leafless dark shapes against the lightless dark sky, I’ve often wondered if a sunlamp would best remedy my seasonal affective disorder. But I don’t really need one. What I have instead: Snapper and Jellyfish, a pair of fluffy tabbies, whose golden green eyes burn a million watts brighter than any therapeutic device. Or they would, if they were actually open. But they’re not. Because here’s the thing: When winter sets in, our cats put themselves to bed early. Sunlamps do not purr, I’m guessing, or drift off snoring. But if there’s anything more comforting than a sleeping cat, I could not tell you what it is.
And yes, we do need to be comforted on these short, dark days. Days where night begins its rapid encroachment directly after lunch, and the distant memories of summer seem like they are visions not from another season but from a distant planet. (Were we really eating strawberry Pavlova out on the deck at 9 p.m., when streaks of pink still lit up the sky? Maybe it was a collective hallucination, and the truth is that it’s always been winter.)
So, come late afternoon, we turn the lights on and the heat up. And Snapper and Jellyfish retire for the evening. They ascend the staircase on their little jelly-beaned feet, sighing, and curl up at the foot of our bed because—or so we imagine them thinking—why fight it? It’s no small joy to know that we can always find them there, atop our thick comforter, for curling up around. They’re not hunting summer’s moths or watching chipmunks predatorily through the window. They’re here, in bed, asleep. Sure, they might appear downstairs again around dinnertime to beg for bits of cheese and chicken and to swish their fluffy tails terrifyingly close to our candle flames. But they won’t stay long, because coziness beckons—and it beckons us, too.
So, my husband and I also retire early, with our books and our milky peppermint tea, and console our winter-weary selves with the luxury of conked-out cats. Cats too sleepy to protest when we kiss their tummies or drape them over our chests like warm little weighted blankets with legs. Snow might be falling, snow on snow, snow on snow. Slush might be gathering around the tires of our car, icing over by morning, and, down in our gloomy basement, the oil tank might make an alarmingly hollow thud when banged. But we have a woodstove and a woodpile, and we have these purring little engines of blinky contentedness. Perhaps, as improbable as it seems, the days will lengthen, and sap will flow again through the bare branches of our moonlit maples. And all will be okay once more—because it already is.
—Catherine Newman is the author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things.
