Dark Mode

“I’m warm, mama,” says my almost-three-year-old, fussing with her jacket from the bed of our little red wagon. I’ve been pulling her in loops around the backyard, bumping up and down over the uneven flagstones, turning last year’s brittle grass into mud.

“It’s because you’re wearing black,” I say brightly over my shoulder, passing back into the long shadow of the house. My hands and nose are cold, but the rest of me is warm, too. “Dark colours absorb the sunshine and warm you up. Lighter colours reflect the sunlight away, so you don’t get as hot. That’s why we wear light colours in the summer, and dark ones in the winter.”

I feel sheepish explaining this, fully covered in black clothes on a mild spring morning, as I have been each day for months. Any attempt to deviate from my all-black uniform always ends in me returning to my closet within the hour, angrily shoving the offensively colourful thing into the laundry hamper. (Not even back onto the shelf where it belongs, barely worn or dirtied; no, this thing needs to be punished.)

Why am I doing this? Maybe it’s just one less thing to decide each day. I have three pairs of black leggings, four black shirts. It’s comforting. A predictable outcome, results guaranteed. It’s the least unflattering thing I have in my wardrobe. I tell myself it’s classy, sophisticated, easy to accessorize, slimming. It shows no dirt.

Maybe it’s the isolation, the fact that I can’t escape myself. I’m not making healthy new habits. Not making a better version of myself. Trying to disassociate from my body instead. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to take care of myself and everyone else. My workout clothes languish on the basement stairs. My elliptical grows feathery cobwebs. My livestream schedule remains a blank. Why am I not doing this?

I’ve been biding, brooding in the dark ink of my wardrobe, waiting until the hues of springtime might work their way into me. Or a vaccine might work into my arm. Until some elusive thing changes.

Maybe my costume is a little funeral. The death toll hovers now around 2.7 million. The bedroom upstairs remains empty.

Maybe it is a little cocoon. Maybe the first part was the dissolution of everything, and now, some things are starting to assemble. I’m reading poetry. Writing poetry. Recording new songs, collaborations, videos; writing grants. So many little things sprouting, but the days are too full to keep my social feeds updated - not when the laundry hamper is never empty and there’s a meal to be made every four hours. I have been writing this blog post in my head for weeks, as an explanation for my radio silence. (I frequently imagine taking photos with the caption, “If you create a thing but nobody Instagrams it, did it even happen?”)

Another morning, we saw new things growing where they had never grown before. Dioxazine blue buds, hyacinth hiding in plump green shoots. One thing turned into three.

What a perfect way to arrive, a brand new bulb in the dark earth. No expectations, no suspense - just nothing, nothing, nothing, and then: something. Then: returning year after year, and out of the dark, more perfect arrivals.

I’m excited about all these things I’m making. These things that feel like me. But I have no tidy conclusion for you. I might document these things, or I might just keep them secret. I might put on a blue shirt, and then take it off again. I might stuff the workout clothes, unworn, into the washing machine. Maybe the sun will make me so damn hot that I have to stop wearing black.

Trying to predict or ascribe reasons for my own behaviour is something I have long given up on. If I knew myself, I would not be myself. For now, I’m happy to keep wearing things that bring me comfort. If the pandemic (and my pregnancy not too long before) have taught me anything, it’s that life is too short to wear uncomfortable clothes, uncomfortable expectations, uncomfortable masks. When I wear black, I am peaceful. I can spend the day making meals and crafts with my child. I still sometimes have the feeling that I should be doing something else, but she is only little for so long, and I know I will not regret making her the sunshine of my life.

And so, I peel the dark layer off my little one, bundling it behind her ginger curls, a makeshift pillow in the wagon bed, and I pull her around the yard again. But I keep my dark layers on, absorbing the sunshine, and waiting…