You are My Sunshine

finding life in the darkness

I curl up in the recliner with a blanket over my legs after a day of swimming in Lake Michigan. There is a notebook in my hands and a worn out feeling in my body from being on the water for hours. Being a teenager with no job affords me a lot of time to enjoy magical lake summers.

Sun pours like liquid gold around life outside the living room.

I put pen to paper and I write myself a letter for the upcoming winter months. It goes something like this . . .

You can do this. Summer is coming again soon. Keep going, Shelbie. The sun will shine again. It won’t always feel this way . . .

I’m writing this letter because I know I’ll forget this feeling.

I’ll forget what it’s like to feel the sun.

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Water ripples on the crystalline lake as my friends from Florida tell me, “You could never live in Florida, Shelbie. It’s too hot.”

But they don’t know me. They don’t know how I loath winter in Northern Michigan. The way the snow piles up on the sides of the road in brown mounds, blue salt sparkling like toxic diamonds. How the days feel like years. How I take naps to stave off reality. How my body aches like I have the flu even when I don’t. How it feels like a part of me has died.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) my counselors call it.

Seasonal affective disorder steals my creativity.

It causes me to drop out of college when the winter hits because I can’t summon the energy to complete my classes. (or ask for help.)

Seasonal affective disorder is a part of my life until . . . I move to Florida.

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Sunshine crawls its way into every Florida crevice. Folks complain about the heat. I shake my head. “I’ll take a Florida summer over a Michigan winter any day.” I tell them.

When I open the door of our townhouse to take my half-blind Boston Terrier for a walk around the sunshine-splashed complex with green grass and and evergreen feel to the entire climate, my glasses slide down my nose in the humidity. It’s annoying, but it’s 1000% better than climbing into a basket of warm laundry that just came out of the dryer in the bitter cold of Michigan. Yes, I prefer my glasses melting off my face. And yes, I have literally climbed into a basket of laundry fresh from the dryer to keep warm in Michigan. But not in Florida!

In the sunshine I write a book. Then another and another.

In the sunshine I start working out more.

In the sunshine I feel like myself.

“I don’t ever want to move back to Michigan,” I tell my husband. “I think I’d want to die. I can’t feel that way again. I can’t.”

In the sunshine I dream of starting a family. I’ve always wanted kids but we’re pretty sure we won’t have any biological kids. I want two kids. Maybe three. My dreams take root. We begin filling out adoption paperwork.

Sunshine is what I needed all along.

///

Oregon is nothing like Florida or Michigan. We live in the high desert which means it’s dry and hot. Well . . . not in the winter. In the winter it snows sporadically. The clouds come but they are replaced by sun in days.

Like the cloud of depression that clings to me my entire pregnancy. It is replaced by hopeful sunshine when my son is born in March.

We didn’t plan to move here. I loved the Florida sunshine but after a job opportunity my husband couldn’t refuse presented itself, we moved. We also changed our plans to start a family. After a lot of thought, we decided to try to get pregnant.

It worked.

The days feel like weeks as I take on the challenge of caring for a colicy baby. I love him, but I am sick. My mind is once again covered in clouds that have nothing to do with the weather outside. Painful anxiety I don’t know how to manage overtakes me. I try my best to love my son though the darkness, but I wonder how I’ll survive.

Little by little, we make it. Day by day. Week by week. Until he is almost two years old and everything falls apart . . .

///

We are living in a beautiful home in Oregon when I realize we’re going to have to move back to Michigan. I quietly leave the living room and retreat to my bedroom, away from visiting family and my son and husband.

Tears wet my face as I think of all my husband and I have built over the years and how quickly it came crashing down with the loss of his job followed by an almost cancer diagnosis. I found out I was pregnant in Oregon. We went on so many adventures. I birthed my son in the hospital five minutes from our house. This is where we became a family. As beautiful as these memories are to me, I’m not sure if I can ever be pregnant again. Or endure another year of a colicky baby.

Clouds cover the wheat fields outside my window as I weep hot tears, curled on the couch in our bedroom.

We can’t afford to stay. Mason’s brother has offered us a home in Michigan. With no income, we agree to make the cross-country move.

My brain and body fight it. I don’t want to live in the wintry cloudy abyss again. I don’t want to leave the sun.

///

One year later the clouds darken my mind as winter takes Michigan in its claws. I make a playlist of musical numbers to try and lift my mood.

“I think you should try getting a job,” Mason tells me.

My heart aches. Being a mother is all I’ve ever wanted. I was sure once I had my son I wouldn’t work outside the home again for many years. In all fairness, I told Mason I could look for something now that our unemployment has run out and he’s working on all the options he has.

The darkness seems to come for my heart as I find a job and begin working three days a week.

In winter.

Audiobooks keep my company on my drives to and from work. They bring a ray or two of sunshine into my days. But I miss my son. I miss the dream I thought my life would be.

I also miss summer.

And then I find out I’m pregnant.

///

In January of our second full year in Michigan the sky is slate gray. How long has it been like this? Days? A week?

I’m in the kitchen of the house we’ve been living in for almost two years. My stomach is still soft from birthing my second son less than two months ago. Stretch marks and linea nigra mark my skin as fog hovers in my mind.

I’m holding my miracle baby. The second son we never knew would exist. He’s already been easier than our first, giving me so much grace and healing parts of my shattered mother spirit. I’ve been able to stay home full time with my boys. A beautiful blessing.

The fog of anxiety hasn’t been as low hanging this time. It’s more of an occasional mist. This time, I’m struggling most with the darkness outside my windows. I miss the Florida sunshine. I miss the Oregon sunshine more.

I look outside again. Still cloudy. My head hurts from the lack of sunshine.

Mason walks into the kitchen.

“I hate this,” I tell him. “I hate winter. I want the sun back. I want summer and sunshine.”

There is so much unspoken in my statement.

How long with this winter of you not being able to find a job last? How long will we be here? Will we stay? Can I survive the winters if we stay? My heart and body still hurt from having a baby. I’m afraid I can’t be a good mom to my two sons. My attention is so divided I wonder if they get what they need.

Mason has grown accustomed to these tirades. This restlessness in my body. He looks at the baby in my arms and says, “Ry is your sunshine this winter.”

My jaw snaps shut as the indignation leaves my body. I look at the baby in my arms. This baby who I was afraid to meet. Not because I didn’t love him from the moment I knew he existed, but because it was so hard last time. I felt like I was loosing parts of myself. I’ve never considered something (or someone) besides the sun being my sunshine.

But he already is.

He brings me joy and peace. He makes me feel alive. He is perfect. He is the miracle I didn’t know I needed.

The clouds may cover the sky like a wool blanket, but under their cover, I am warm inside with my baby.

He is my sunshine.

And maybe next year, if I’m still in cloudy Michigan, I can find the sunshine in simply being a mother. My dream come true no matter where life takes me or how it turns out.

Other things that are making me feel alive this winter:

-The Really Very Crunchy Podcast.

-The Big Bang Theory TV show.

-Reading books. This is my Goodreads.

-Making bread with this recipe.

-Listening to this curated musical playlist.

-Playing with my sons.

-And also, the actual sunshine that peeks out every so often.

Keep scrolling to read more about what makes creative mothers feel alive.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Alive."