As far as clocks -- and it is time to think of them --
. . . time is different now 
and dawn is different too . . . 
     -- Gerald Stern
         "In Time"
         Poetry, October 2001

Daylight Saving Time ended yesterday morning at two o'clock. That means that before we went to bed we had to make the rounds of the house, turning back our clocks one hour. We have fifteen clocks that need to be changed, not counting those on each of our computers and the radio-controlled weather clock in the kitchen, which change themselves. Changing our mechanical clocks is easy, especially if you have a plan -- each of us will change certain clocks and we will perform the task at a certain hour. Changing our body  clocks is harder. I woke up yesterday at 4:30, which felt like 5:30, still too early for a Sunday morning.

It always takes me a few days to adjust to the time change, especially the earlier darkness in the late afternoon. I've always gotten up so early that except at the height of summer I usually rise in the dark. Because of Lynn I'm still on "school time" even though she doesn't need me to get her up and moving. (I'm proud to say that only twice in these three years since I left work have Ron and I both slept through Lynn's getting up and going off to school.)

In the past week I've experienced a physical need to be outside, breathing the air and soaking up the light. The colors of the leaves against a startling blue sky have dazzled me and something in me has pushed me to look closely, to take photographs, to lay down lines with colored pencils in the margins of my notebook when I get home.

I've also experienced two bouts of profound midday fatigue, on Friday and Saturday so overhwleming that I went back to bed before noon for sleep without rest. This is an early sign of a gathering depression, the Seasonal Affective Disorder that I experience in varying degrees each year. Yesterday I went down to the basement and retrieved my "living with depression" workbook guides, if only to remind myself of the steps I need to take to accommodate my symptoms -- breathe, exercise, eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and remind myself that these feelings of futility are part of a process and not a permanent reality.

I sometimes wish I'd known these things in 1973, the darkest year of my life. That was the year of the Oil Crisis, and in order to conserve energy the government decreed that Daylight Saving Time should continue beyond October. It actually continued for two years, until the fall of 1975.

I had descended into a full depression in late 1972, fueled by adverse life events as well as hormonal and light patterns. I was able to function in my job (if in a mechanical, forgettable way -- I'd be astonsihed to learn that anyone from that era remembers me as a favorite teacher) and manage my own affairs, but I had absolutely no joy in my life. Because DST extended into November and December and beyond, I found that I rose in darkness, left the house in darkness, and arrived at school (about 7:30) still in full darkness. I felt so exhausted at the end of the day that I went straight to bed when I got home about 3:30. Sometimes I would awake, see the hands on my clock radio indicating a perfect straight 6:00, and not know which six o'clock that was.

At least I'd changed that clock. The one in the kitchen had a dial that only moved forward, so that if you wanted to set it back an hour you had to advance it through all twelve. The turning was awkward and tedious, and although I could have just unplugged the thing for an hour, either method of change seemed too complicated for me to handle. Thus for many months the clocks in my house showed two different times, a condition that I know intensified my ennui.

I'm so much wiser now, and I'm confident that I can work with atmospheric and hormonal and even political events that I cannot change, rather than feel helpless and let them work against me. Melanie, my good black dog* is back, and for once I'm almost happy to see her.

(*Melanie is the personification of my depression. I wrote about her last year as well.)