The light here is different than it was at home. The summer days are longer, the winter days are shorter. The angle of the light changes more noticeably throughout the year — in the winter here, even at noon, the sun is not overhead and we get, at best, a kind of weak sunlight that is neither very cheering nor very warming, even on the brightest of days. In the autumn, the light is beautiful. It is mostly golden, and has that wonderful “late afternoon” look all day long. Everything touched by the sunlight looks like it’s glowing, and the trees, already golden, look like they’re on fire when the light catches them. Sometime in the fall, the sun stops coming in directly through our kitchen window in the afternoons, and in the mornings, it no longer comes through our living room windows. We have to wait again until spring comes around again to see it streaming across the floor. As the autumn moves towards winter, we lose the “afternoon” effect of the light and move into a state where it seems to be perpetually early evening — a state which persists throughout the winter.
Just now, it is spring again, and we’ve begun to get our sunlight back. Sitting in the living room in the mornings, the sun shines directly on our couch now — something it hasn’t done since the fall. Just a few days ago, I was suddenly blinded by a ray of sunlight coming through the window, and I had a moment of confusion until I remembered that yes, that is normal — we just haven’t seen it for a while. Spring is here, and we’re finally getting our sunlight back.