In the Dark

Jarred from the peace of sleep and the comfort of warm flannel sheets, I retrieve my glasses and Kindle from my bedside table and, with a little Yorkie in my arms, stumble from the bedroom. Molly’s internal clock says it’s time to get up. It’s barely 4 a.m. and I inadvertently trained her to rise at this hour. It’s okay. I’d be up whether she was or not.

It’s dark—the sun doesn’t rise until around 9 a.m. at this time of year. I’m still half asleep and, as I do at the start of every morning, I go over in my mind the plans I have for the day. It takes a few moments longer than normal for me to remember what day it is, but I get there, and remember that I have no commitments. A home day. A good day.

In the living room, I press a button and lights on the non-traditional tree illuminate. In the kitchen, the light on my Aerogarden is programmed to come on shortly after 4 a.m. Some mornings I’m up before that and I touch a button on the front to turn it on for the basil that’s growing. This is one of those mornings.

Molly takes care of business (she has a “doggy bathroom” so we don’t have to go outside in the frigid Saskatchewan morning) while I drop a teabag in a mug and switch on the Keurig. She follows me into the woman cave, where I turn on the heater and pull a blanket from the back of a wing chair. We wander back to the kitchen where my tea is finished steeping, then pad back to the sanctuary of my office to welcome the day. (Well, one of us, does. The other curls up and goes back to sleep.)

“I am very fond of winter dark when the world is still sleeping.”
~ Jane Urquhart, In Winter I Get Up At Night

I love early mornings at this time of year—at any time of year, to be honest, but there’s something especially sweet about the liminality of pre-dawn when it’s still dark and cold and silent as night. The heater in my room hums. Three battery-powered candles flicker (hope, peace, joy—one for each Sunday in Advent so far). I sit back and close my eyes.

I struggled with my mental health earlier this month. A look back in my journal reminded me that I stumble a bit every year at this time. I’ve come to expect it though I don’t welcome it. This year, I’m leaning in to another lesson that I wish I had learned a long time ago.

“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”
~ Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

Darkness becomes my teacher as I make space to ruminate on things that trouble me. I examine, with a measured detachment, circumstances and my thoughts and behaviours in light of them. I remember that there are some things I have control over and others I need to release (this is so hard sometimes).

Sound carries farther in winter, and I hear trains banging in the yard across the field from our neighbourhood as they’re rearranged. Molly hears a neighbour with a dog walk past our house and she goes on alert.

“Shhh…,” I tell her. “All is well.”

I sip my tea. Read the news. Check my email and social media accounts. Read. Think about a word to take with me into 2025. Tap out words in the journal I keep on my iPad. Look back through the list of books I’ve read this year and think about which ones will make the top ten.

Around seven, Molly and I leave the sanctuary of my woman cave. I refill her water dish and measure out her day’s ration of kibble (not being a breakfast eater, she won’t touch it. I’ll end uplifting the dish and offering it to her again later in the day.) Gerry gets up. I shower and dress, then make coffee and join him in the living room. We chat about this-and-that, and solve all the problems in the world.

Lessons learned or at least pondered in the dark come with me into the day. Light banishes dark. Day begins.