The High Contrast Life

On a Domestic Scale

A friend lives in L.A. and grumbles when it’s 60 degrees and cloudy. When she last complained, it was 22, “feels like 12,” where I live. Yet I did not envy her. I like a four-season high-contrast life. You appreciate sunny, 75-degree days much more when you don’t have them all the time, and you also get to like the cold. (“No bad weather, just bad gear!”)

In the summer, when I’m baking at the beach, with sweat rolling into my ears, I try to conjure the feeling of winter. I tell myself how cold I am. Better yet, I play this game with somebody else, preferably a child who can enter this fantasy of being too cold and start shivering with me. I keep it going for a while: “Now the wind is howling!” “My face feels so cold!” “Oh, no, you’ve lost your gloves, your fingers must be freezing!” Then I bring us back to the beach, to the sun.

There’s a movement afoot to abolish Daylight Savings Time. It doesn’t get my vote! Whether we’re springing forward or falling back, I love these time changes as a way to greet winter and spring. In the fall, dawn suddenly comes an hour sooner. In the spring, night suddenly comes an hour later. To me, the Daylight Savings jogs are welcome jolts in the long march of imperceptibly changing days.

I don’t eat between meals. We didn’t snack when I was growing up, so I didn’t develop the habit. By mealtime I’m often ravenous. Then I dig in, savoring those first mouthfuls. That old saying is true: “Hunger is the best sauce of all.”

In our lives, this alternation of hunger and satiety comes naturally, and it doesn’t apply only to food.

When I don’t see a friend for a while, I really miss them—but I don’t want to see them every day! I probably wouldn’t appreciate them as much if I did.

In middle age and later, most people don’t have sex very often. The pause creates a longing and the longing makes it greater later. The alternation of desire and fulfillment helps keep things exciting.

When the children were young, we lived in Greenwich Village and spent weekends and vacations in a farmhouse upstate New York. That felt very high-contrast. The city made me appreciate the country, and vice versa.

In retirement, it can be a challenge to distinguish weekdays from weekends, but to me it’s important. During the week, I get up early to run with the dog. On weekends, I stay in bed while my husband walks Theo . . . and gets the croissants. Then we loll about with the pastries and the newspaper. I suppose we could have lazy mornings all the time, but then hedonic adaptation would set in and we wouldn’t appreciate them as much. Even now, Saturday is better than Sunday as I realize that no, today I don’t have to rush out, it’s the weekend!

One way or another, most of my work is mental, so at the end of the day, it feels good to do something with my hands. Cooking a meal is completely different from what I do in my study; I can’t just use my mind, I must peel the garlic and cut the onions. The results are tangible . . . and temporary. In the study, it’s the opposite. The products are intangible . . . but perhaps they’ll be fresh in a month, in a year.

I like to hustle then relax. I like to work out then veg out. I like to be alone and I like to talk to friends. In a quiet and domestic life, I seek the extremes.