RECORD STORE TALES #1080: S.A.D. Origins

As long as I can remember, I’ve hated winter, and craved the warm rays of summer.  My dominant genes are Mediterranean.  My not-so-distant ancestors made their living on the balmy coasts of Sicily, and Amalfi before that.  I was never cut out for the cold months.

I took hockey lessons as a kid.  I hated putting on those uncomfortable skates and all that cold-weather gear.  “Why do I have to take hockey lessons, mom?”

“Every good Canadian boy should know how to skate,” she answered.

Why?  Why couldn’t I just stay indoors where it was warm and I didn’t have to bundle up in three layers to go outside?  Hockey lessons never appealed, and to this day, I can’t really skate.  I mean, I can go forward…I can turn…but I can’t stop.  So, I can’t really skate.  Do I care?  No.  It’s been 27 years since I was last on skates.  More than half my life ago.

I can’t ski.  I can’t even get on the chairlift properly.  I haven’t been on skis since…1986 maybe?  No interest whatsoever.  We would build snowforts and take toboggans downhill, but I would much rather it be warm outside, riding my bike and playing in the sun.  The winter was always wet and messy.

My earliest memory of seasonal affective disorder was studying a globe with my dad as a kid.  I’ve long been obsessed with maps.  I’d study maps until the cows came home.  This time, we were looking at a globe.  He was explaining how the analemma on the globe worked: that figure-eight line that tracked the movement of the sun over the 12 months of the year.  The line can be traced by finding the position of the Sun as viewed from the same position on Earth at the same time every day.  In the winter, the sun can be found travelling the line in the southern hemisphere on our globe, but my dad explained, once December 21 came and went, the sun would be making its way back north again.  I would look at the globe and find the date on the analemma.  It sure made it feel like summer was coming, to see it translated into mere centimeters on a globe.

It’s quite remarkable that I was feeling those feelings as a kid.  Not even 10 years old yet?  Counting the days until the sun was back in the northern hemisphere.  To the days when I shed my outer skin of parkas and boots, and went back down to a T-shirt and shorts, basking in the comfort of the Canadian summer.  Seasonal affective disorder has been with me at least that long.

Another memory:  winter time, putting on my layers to go outside.  By the time all the layers were on, I didn’t want to go outside anymore.  My parents really struggled with trying to keep me active in the winter.  I wished I could have hibernated through it all.

I wonder if the added component here was school?  I hated school.  I hated the bullies.  The summer represented time away from all of that.  I wonder how much that fed into my seasonal affective disorder?

I guess that’s something I can explore with my mental health team this winter, as I try new strategies to stave off the S.A.D.ness.  We have some tentative plans and vitamin D is on the menu.  Let’s make the most of it.

Wish me luck.