“This s my favorite room of the house!” exclaims my visiting niece after taking the obligatory tour through our new log home in the woods of Western Montana. Hers would not be a noteworthy comment, except for the fact that we are standing in my husband’s workshop, out back and behind the garage.
An adjunct to the property that is home to the main abode consisting of a 20 ft. ceiling great room that boasts of massive log trusses and chandeliers, stunning decks, hardwood floors, and two hallways leading to bedroom wings completely furnished in rustic cabin style, this working space is spare. The windows are unfinished, the walls white, the floor concrete. A small wood stove rests in the corner. It’s a tangle of tools, wood pieces, guns, and fly fishing rods. Mountains of sawdust surround half completed “projects.” It’s Brad’s winter retreat for the daily cigar, his creative quarters when something needs constructing, reloading, or re-rigged—the man cave. No women allowed.
Yet it is Erin’s favorite room. The young nurse who enjoys a mug of afternoon tea, a Jane Austen book, and a sylvan setting in the woods cannot explain her attraction, but I can: it’s the “happy lights.”
When Brad and I began shopping for light fixtures for our new home, the expert at Western Montana Lighting didn’t take long to size us up; we still sported tans and blonde streaks in our hair. Most Southern Californians who relocate to Missoula drag around like the walking dead during the winter months.
“Get happy lights for the workshop, “ he recommended, figuring our high ceilings and glass inset doors would allow for sufficient light to penetrate the house itself. It took me a few minutes to adjust my mindset to the purchase of a light bulb that could actually elevate my mood. I’d sported a mood ring in high school that could detect my cerebral shifts, but a light bulb that could banish the blues? Indoor lighting that mimics natural sunlight by producing up 10 10,000 LUX of natural spectrum daylight in order to wage war with winter blues was only something I’d faintly heard of back under my native perennial sunny skies. Just as light therapy had been successfully used to treat tuberculosis in 1927 and jaundiced nursery babies in the 1950’s, now supposedly light therapy corrects Seasonal Affective Disorder, AKA winter depression.
Should we be concerned that we were building our retirement dream home someplace that required amped up lighting to keep us from plunging into the depths of seasonal depression?
“I double my dosage of Vitamin D-3 during the winter months,” a new acquaintance pointed out while giving me directions to the nearest post office—her directive being right up there alongside necessary services on her “new resident” information list. “It’s safe to take as much as 10,000 milligrams, they say!” Yikes. She might explode with happiness were she to drop in for a cigar in Brad’s workshop while partaking in this supplemental regime.
Mood-elevating lighting is noticeably white; it lends a bleached effect to any room. At first you wonder if it’s fluorescent, but during the time you attempt to determine just what it is that makes it unusual, you’re too satisfied to pursue the issue any further.
So the first winter arrived, and I waited for the slam—the anvil of ennui that would settle into my brain. I would wake up one morning and be unable to get out of bed. “Bring me one of those light bulbs!” I would weakly beg Brad so I could at least pull off the covers and make it as far as my bathrobe.
Day after day I waited; day after day, Brad retreated to his shop to “work.” He was unbearably chipper when he came in for a glass of wine before dinner. Was I crabby? I told him to tell me—do that intervention in case I didn’t see myself slipping.
December turned to January, January to February, February to March. I’d only cried over nothing a couple of times—par for me. I could always blame hormones for those episodes. In fact, I found myself feeling quite pleased when the snow fell and I enjoyed weather as an excuse not to leave the house to hustle off to some mundane meeting or pesky errand. Since childhood in the Beach Boys’ state I’d longed for a dramatic change of seasons. You might say I was genuinely happy to experience an authentic winter—the “White Christmas” of croon.
Hence, whenever I ambled out to the shop with a snack for my beloved, upon opening the door, I went from joy to juiced; I felt like I was having one of those near-death experiences where I’m about to step into the light. In the face of such false felicity I turned tail and retreated to the house where I could just be jolly.
Winter turned to Spring, Spring to Summer, and then one morning in Autumn, Brad asked me if I would mind tacking one of his errands onto the endless list of mine. Being a good sport, I agreed. When I learned it was to stop by Western Montana Lighting to pick up some track lighting he’d ordered for the storage room that he planned to convert into an office, I secretly bemoaned such a boring task: I hadn’t planned to head out Reserve Street quite that far, I had too many other things on my agenda, they don’t sell cute shoes. Begrudgingly, I sandwiched it into the proper order of my cycle, then upon arrival pulled my neck scarf over my chin against the wind, huddled in my jacket, and lumbered in as if I was on my last leg.
Steve, the man who had helped select lighting for the house, handed me a hefty box with Brad’s new apparatus and accompanying paraphernalia. While waiting to pay, I felt indefinable joy wash over me. I shucked my scarf, chuckled at Steve’s jokes and told a few of my own. I chatted with the receptionist, and grinned and cajoled with other customers. Then it occurred to me: this sudden bliss might be bogus. I gestured to the array of fixtures that illuminated the counter area.
“Are these happy lights?” I asked.
“You bet!” an employee who sipped her coffee answered, with an overzealous smile.
Disconsolate no longer, I skipped to my car, mindful of good-temper temporariness: once out the front door I was operating on residual merriment in the face of a long, boring drive home.
I have a proposal for automotive manufacturers who wish to ramp up sales during an economic downturn: Install happy lights on every car console. As it is, I may have to smoke a cigar when I get home.
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