DARK IS COLD, BUT LIGHT CAN GO EITHER WAY
This week, I’m ruminating about the time my youngest kiddle made a disconcerting discovery.
A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a work conference at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I made arrangements for hubby and kiddle to come with me and we bookended the conference with a family trip. The conference would occur the week before kiddle’s 7th birthday in October. We would arrive a couple days early to explore Disney World as a family before the conference started.
We thought it would be prudent to prep the kiddle before the trip and explained how even though it was October, there would be no snow on the ground, flowers would be blooming, and it would be warm like July in Fairbanks. We talked about the rides and looked over the various nearby parks to decide which ones to attend. I would be attending workshops and panels during the day and an evening reception the first night, but most of my evenings would be free to spend with the family. We told kiddle about the long 15-hour flight and made sure snacks, books, toys, and coloring materials were at hand in the carry-on bag.
Kiddle was used to long flights visiting family in Utah, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey and her behavior on the airplane was impeccable. We had to be at the airport at midnight to catch the 1:00 a.m. flight from Fairbanks to Seattle. Then we flew to Chicago and finally arrived in Orlando at 6:00 p.m. We were tired but excited to get to our hotel room. We boarded the shuttle bus and arrived at our hotel about an hour later.
A long line of guests snaked it’s way from the front desk to the lobby door, so we perused the hotel gardens while we waited. Kiddle loved the beautiful flowers and statuary shaped like Disney characters. The sun set and the outside lights came on as the darkness expanded. We explored the hotel lobby and went outside to look at the gardens again. Kiddle was getting restless and wanted to get back in line where Dad was holding our place. Finally, she said, “Mom, it’s warm.”
“Yes, it is sweetie,” I replied. “Remember when we said it would be warm here even though it’s October?”
“But Mom. It’s WARM,” she cried and started to fret.
“Yes, sweetie. We’ll be in our hotel room soon and they have air conditioning and that will make it cooler,” I said reassuringly.
Kiddle looked at me as if I was dense and turned to her Dad to exclaim, “NO, DAD, IT’S DARK AND IT’S WARM!!”
“I know it was dark when we got on the airplane, but we spent the whole day flying, so it’s night now,” he calmly explained.
“BUT IT’S WARM AND DARK! IT’S WARM AND DARK! HOW CAN IT BE WARM? IT’S DARK! IT’S WARM,” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
I smiled nervously as the people in line stared. I whisked her back to the gardens and tried to distract her. What was going on? Was she losing her mind? Finally, I realized that in Fairbanks it’s almost always cold when it is dark outside.
Even though the sun sets in summer, it doesn’t get truly dark. In fact, it’s light enough that stars cannot be seen during the summer months. However, in winter the sun rises a few hours a day, so it can be light outside and cold, but the opposite rarely occurs. Even though she was born in Pennsylvania, she was less than two years old when we moved up north, so all her memories are associated with living in Fairbanks. Kiddle had spent family vacations Outside (lower 48) in the summer, so she’d experienced warm temperatures during dark nights before, but it didn’t hit her until our trip to Disney World.
We finally checked in and crashed onto the beds in our hotel room. We enjoyed the rest of the trip and kiddle adjusted to experiencing dark nights with warm temps. When we returned to Fairbanks, I asked my colleagues who had grown up in Alaska if they had had a similar experience. Every one of them could recollect when and where they were when they discovered it could be warm when it was dark.
Every generation experiences a cultural milestone that almost everyone alive at that time recollects. For my husband, it was the JFK assassination. For me, it was hearing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time. For the older kiddles it was 9-11. For my daughter and her fellow Alaskans, it was the first time they experienced warmth in darkness. ~ Emery Lamb
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