Jan K.

I’m sick of playing hide and seek with the Dutch sun. It’s supposedly “morning time,” but the sun isn’t holding up its end of the bargain. Instead of shining gloriously through the windows, it’s secreting away behind a thick wall of dark gray clouds, biding its time.

Days go by like this.

I walk the dog through a dark and misty whatever-time-of-day it’s supposed to be. I’m back home working behind my computer in my home office. Because it is so dark outside, I turn on the overhead lamp. I sip my hot tea, get lost in my work, sip my cold tea. Suddenly, my office fills with sunlight.

I snap out of work mode, quickly save my document, and run downstairs. I pull on my shoes and go outside. Brrr! I run back for my coat, slip it on, and hastily zip it up before sprinting to the back door. The bench on the patio is damp from the rain, so I stand, thankful to feel the natural light on my face. I close my eyes, seeking the sun’s warmth on my eyelids, but the light fades to dark.
I open my eyes.
The sun has sequestered itself away again behind a bank of dark, swiftly moving clouds. Game on!
Were someone to ask me to describe myself in one sentence, I’d say something like this: I am a S.A.D, listless Californian, untethered and drifting in the gray abyss of the Dutch spring.

I turn on the kettle and wash a few dishes while I wait for the water to heat. I drink another cup of hot tea as if this liquid heat can make up for the sun’s absence. I look up S.A.D., or Seasonal Affective Disorder on Wikipedia. Check. Check. Check. Armed with a handful of vegan cookies, I go back to work. While working, I calculate the distance from my home office to my bedroom. No one would know if I took a nap in the middle of my work day . . .

The ongoing game of hide and seek I’m involuntarily playing with the sun takes a break for the evening, but starts anew the next morning, if you can call it that. Despite the glass wall and sliding glass door that make up one side of our dining room, we are in the dark as we eat toast and drink English Breakfast tea. I’m grumpy and irritable, on the verge of tears. I turn on all four of the living room lights. It helps. A bit.

I take a Vitamin D supplement before slipping on my raincoat and head out into the drizzle of a dark and sunless sky for the Beagle’s “morning” walk. Jamie the Beagle seems unfazed by the weather. She wags her tail jubilantly, and I try to connect with her joy. I’ve almost embraced the whole living vicariously thing when I discover the source of her joy–an unearthed pile of cat poop. She knows I know what she knows, and she lunges for the tasty morsel. She’s faster, and gets in one bite before I can yank her away. Disgusted, I firmly lead my naughty dog down the brick sidewalk away from her happiness.

The cold drizzle slowly dampens my face and communes with my tear ducts. I’m a grown ass woman. Am I really going to cry about the weather?

I see my neighbor, Jan K, who is working in his wild garden in the rain. There are many bright flowers in his garden that I might describe as radiant, rain-kissed, and cheerful if I weren’t in such a foul mood. Jan greets me. I say nothing about his beautiful garden. Naturally, our conversation is in Dutch, but it goes something like this.
“Hey Kristin. Good morning! How are you?” He is genuinely cheerful despite the overcast sky and the film of water on his face, hat, and clothing.
“I’m . . .” my tear ducts flip a switch, and they are now part of the autonomic system I cannot control. My voice is unsteady and hard to hear. “I’m a bit depressed,” I admit. “Not sure why, exactly. Probably just this dreary weather. ” I go for a smile, but this function seems to be temporarily out of service. “All this gray . . . it’s getting me down.”
Jan’s smile is effortless, and it reaches all the way up to his deep glacier blue eyes in a way that could only be labeled as mischievous. His hands turn Shakespearean in their gestures as he responds:
“It’s been raining for days, and my husband doesn’t help with the cleaning, and my teenager doesn’t listen anymore,” he says theatrically, the spitting image of me. “And my dog doesn’t listen,” he throws in for good measure.
“She just ate cat shit,” I confirm. My face has also flipped a switch, because like my tear ducts, the smile that breaks across my face is beyond my control. “Have you been spying on me, Jan?” I laugh.
I don’t remember the rest of what we say to one another, but there is spontaneous singing involved, and a lot of uncontrolled laughter from both sides.

I continue my drizzly walk under the overcast sky and out into countryside. My dog discovers fresh pellets of rabbit poop and soggy reeds of grass rotting at the edge of a water ditch, and she is a sixteen-kilo ball of wiggling pleasure. I feel no need to yank her away. There’s a small patch of beautiful, rain-kissed yellow flowers at the edge of the road. Two ducks are gliding along the rain-dappled surface of the water ditch, quacking to one another. The sheep are hunkered down in the grass, biding their time. The sun is still hiding, the drizzle keeps on drizzling, but something has definitely shifted. And I know who to thank for that.