About two weeks ago we emerged at last from a grim and horrible stretch of gray days. I had been watching the weather like it was my job, eager for any glimpse of "partly sunny" in the forecast. But there was no "partly sunny": we'd been pinned under this unrelenting carpet of cloud, and it was getting me down in a big way. Finally, mercifully, gloriously, the sun came out, and as I walked to my office I found myself having a powerful, visceral response to the sunshine.
I turned my face to the sun and I felt like Lazarus trailing his grave clothes, or at least like the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. It was like I was famished and someone gave me a ham sandwich, or like I'd been walking in the desert and someone handed me a quart of cold water.
It was weird, frankly.
"Ah," I thought to myself, "isn't it evocative when the Bible says 'the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light'? Isn't it interesting that we are put together to crave sunlight and seek it out? Maybe I will blog about that."
And then a day or two later I thought to myself, "No, don't spiritualize that. That was your body, expressing a physical need." You have to imagine the gears inside my brain grinding...grinding...grinding-- and then meshing at last. Vitamin D, that's why we have a physical need for sunshine. Vitamin D, levels of which are suboptimal in about 40% of the population. Vitamin D, which they sell at my neighborhood CVS.
So I hied me to the neighborhood CVS, where I bought the Vitamin D supplements I have been taking faithfully since then. And I am feeling weirdly good for this time of year, you guys. I am not counting the days until the solstice. I am not paralyzed by the weight of the finals grading and the letters of recommendation. I am not battling the never-quite-awake feeling that always plagues me in December.
I did not go to the doctor and request bloodwork, so I can neither confirm that I was feeling crummy because of Vitamin D deficiency nor assert that I am feeling so much better because of my recent Vitamin D intake. I'm just telling you: even though the whole thing is weird, I am finding it persuasive.
So if you too have found yourself stumbling toward the sun like everything would be okay if you could just wrap up a little piece of it to take home for later, here is a tip from me to you: they probably sell Vitamin D at your CVS too.
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