An Argument for Daytime

I have devoted an unreasonable portion of my life to being awake at night, although I am not sure the night has done very much to deserve my loyalty.

I stay awake long after the useful portion of the day has ended. The stores are closed. No one sensible can be called. Nothing can be mailed, collected, repaired, examined or returned. There are no appointments left to make. Even the dog has concluded that nothing further is going to happen.

There are a few things I like about night. I have always been able to spend hours alone with a screen. The first all-nighter of my life was the day we got the internet. I stayed up until sunrise. This did not make me tech savvy. I was interested in where it could take me, not how it worked. Apparently, very little has changed.

Otherwise, you can watch something. You can read. You can think about your life with a degree of intensity that is rarely helpful. You can order an item you would not have purchased at eleven in the morning. You can send a message that would have benefited from daylight.

Unless you are of an age when the evening is only the beginning—and I am not—the possibilities narrow considerably after dark.

I do not dislike going out to dinner. I dislike everything required to make it happen. The reservation. The decision about what to wear. The noise. The expectation that the evening must justify the trouble taken to arrange it.

Daytime asks much less of us.

You leave the house and the world is already in progress. Someone is opening a store. Someone is carrying flowers. A dog is refusing to move. There are newspapers, museums, bakeries, hardware stores and people with somewhere to be. You can have a coat repaired. You can walk into a bookstore with no particular objective and leave with one.

A whole life can be conducted before six o’clock.

If you do not know Maira Kalman, I suggest you stop reading for a moment and Google her. Look at her paintings. This essay will still be here when you return, and it will make considerably more sense.

I once heard Maira describe falling in love many times during the day. This seems to me both extravagant and entirely reasonable. Daytime provides the necessary material. Children on their way to school. Flowers being unloaded from a truck. A dog tied outside the bakery. Someone carrying a very large plant down the street.

There is very little to fall in love with at midnight besides people you should not contact.

I have loved her work for a very long time. I cannot remember exactly when I discovered it. This often happens with the people and things that become permanent. Eventually, it becomes difficult to remember the portion of your life before them.

I was taken by the paintings, of course, but also by the mind behind them. Her work notices what most people have agreed is too minor to mention. Shoes. Cake. Dogs. Napoleon’s bedroom. A woman holding something. The strange importance of an object once a particular person has touched it.

Her work does not insist that life is beautiful. It simply keeps finding evidence that life is occurring.

Years ago, my mother and I discovered an exhibition of Maira’s work in Nantucket. My mother bought me a painting, then bought two for herself that somewhat matched mine.

Whenever my mother bought something, she issued the same reminder: “One day this will all be yours, and it will all go together.”

It was her standard disclaimer.

For years before she died, nearly everything she bought was described as belonging to both of us—hers immediately, mine eventually. She did not say this solemnly. It was simply included with the purchase.

My mother knew more about the limits of time than either of us wanted to discuss. She bought carefully, kept everything beautifully and never confused possession with permanence. A plate would eventually be used by someone else. A painting would move to another wall. The person setting out the good napkins would change.

I thought she was getting rather far ahead of herself.

It turns out she was only saying aloud the arrangement under which all of us live. We call ourselves owners, but we are borrowers. We borrow the paintings, the houses, the people and the time. Most of us manage not to think about the return date.

My mother could not. Perhaps having me in mind made that knowledge easier to bear. She could picture the paintings on my walls, the plates on my table, her life continuing in small practical ways inside mine. She was not trying to hold on to everything. She was making sure it had somewhere to go.

And now it has.

She was not getting ahead of herself. The rest of us are simply behind.

Fortunately, not every encounter with Maira’s work has required quite so much consideration of mortality.

For the past few Christmases, Maira has held a small holiday bazaar in her studio on Broadway. I do not particularly like Christmas. I cannot offer one decisive reason. There are too many expectations, too many decorations and far too much insistence that everyone enjoy themselves. But her bazaar has become a small highlight of the season for me.

She sells books, drawings and embroideries—things more affordable than the paintings but still containing her particular view of the world. There is usually something sweet, often lemon cake, along with hot cider and occasionally a bowl of candy near where she sits. She greets everyone.

I have never formally introduced myself to her. I simply continue appearing at her gallery openings and holiday bazaars. At this point, attendance feels sufficient.

If she has one this year, I suggest you go. I do not say this about many Christmas activities.

I would buy an embroidery for myself and the same one for my mother. They were often identical.

When she died, I was left with two of each.

I kept one and gave the other, along with some of her books, to people I knew would appreciate what they were receiving. Her paintings now hang with mine, exactly as she said they would.

She was right. It all goes together.

The paintings look best in daylight.

At night, loss can become the only fact in the room. There is nothing open to compete with it. No errands. No dogs passing on the sidewalk. No reason to put on a coat and walk somewhere for tea. The mind is allowed to present its case without opposition.

During the day, grief must share the premises.

There are bills. There is laundry. Someone needs an answer. The dog must go out. A package has arrived. Someone is watering the tulips in the park. You remember that you need toothpaste. None of this repairs anything, but it prevents sorrow from claiming to be the only thing still happening.

The day does not ask you to feel better. It simply continues to provide information.

This is what I recognize in Maira’s work, and perhaps what my mother recognized too. The world is unbearable and fascinating. People die. The cake is excellent. Both facts remain true.

I will probably continue staying up too late. A lifelong habit should not be abandoned merely because the argument against it is convincing.

But I no longer mistake the night for possibility.

Possibility belongs to daytime, when doors are unlocked and paintings can be seen. When you can walk into a gallery with your mother and find something you both love. You do not know that one day all three paintings will hang together in your home.

At the time, it is simply an afternoon with your mother. You are only buying paintings.

The night may offer more time.

The day offers the world.