Seasonal Affective Disorder – Marilyn R. Gardner

These days as I get up there is mostly darkness. The glow of fall mornings doesn’t arrive until I am well on my way to work.

As I get up I wrap myself in my sweatshirt, normally reserved for cooler summer days by the ocean. I curl tight against the pillows of the couch, guarding against a melancholy that threatens to overwhelm. The sun and apple picking of yesterday feel far away; the day ahead feels long and rainy.

These are the days when melancholy seems to make its home in my soul, where I feel my heart start to harden around the edges anticipating a cold winter.

It often scares me – my need for sun and warmth. As though the cold has too much power over me.

I head out the door to wait for the 64 bus and as I wait my eye is drawn across the street to a Victorian home. The house has been split into condominiums as is common in this area. Through a clear glass door a bright light shines, cutting through the dim morning light. Fully visible on the other side of the glass is a little person – a toddler in onesie pajamas with tousled bed head.

The warm kitchen and toddler take me back to my days as a younger mom, to warm kitchens and oatmeal cookies, to tables dusted with flour and homemade bread. I’m taken back to five little ones who each had their place in a warm kitchen.

Amazing how the scene pushed the melancholy right out of my heart. For it’s in warm kitchens that little hearts and souls develop. It’s in warm kitchens where confidence is born and love takes root. It’s in warm kitchens where courage is planted and watered and fed, so that we can go out into a world that is anything but warm. It’s in warm kitchens where faith is birthed, grows, and learns to launch.

It’s in warm kitchens where little and big hearts lose their bitter edges and warm to relationship.

The 64 bus is around the corner and the moment is gone but not without its lasting imprint. I sigh and board the bus with a curious resolve to hold this warm kitchen moment until the brilliant colors and breezes of spring blow away the sadness and bring in the front porch moments.

Have you had any warm kitchen moments lately? Would love to hear in the comment section?