Embracing the night, whether we like it or not

I take a walk every day around twilight, which is a technique I adopted this year to combat the effects of seasonal darkness. My theory: it's less about the light itself and more about awareness of the exact moment the light disappears. There is an implied alchemy in watching the sun's retreat. We cross our fingers and stare at its absence, believing our attention will conjure it back tomorrow. There are days when the sun feels inevitable. But sometimes, it feels like a magic that must be carefully maintained.

Around the time we turned the clocks back, and the sun began to set earlier each day, my children started playing a game called Dark Party. The rules are simple — invented, as they were, by a three- and five-year-old. You turn off every single light in the house, put on super loud dance music, and run laps at full tilt, screaming and laughing, and trying not to bump into things.

Complete darkness is a novelty to them. Our old apartment had what I consider to be the defining feature of a Montreal dwelling: never enough sunlight during the day, and far too much streetlight at night. Now, we live a stone's throw from the woods, and I find myself more nervous to walk around at night than I ever was in the city, where I could see almost everything, almost all of the time.

Darkness — when you are a person who relies on eyesight — has the effect of removing all sense of direction and horizon. Space loses its significance and time along with it. And so, to be in the dark is to be utterly present. The pandemic has, of course, wrought its own darkness, not only by dealing out a generous share of individual tragedy, but also by putting us in a collective state of suspended present tense that contemporary humans are ill equipped to survive.

Normally, when time and space start to feel dim and homogenous, we shine lights around ourselves. We try to see what's on the horizon or, failing that, we create our own. We set up playdates or plan a trip or try for a promotion. Without any of these options, we're living in a suspended state very similar to total darkness, never knowing where to place our feet, or what lies ahead.

We're no longer able to judge what might be hovering right before our eyes. We don't know when we'll see family again, we don't know if school will be open next week. We have no idea when we will ever again stand with strangers in a crowded room, excusing ourselves after bumping into someone. "I'm sorry. It's so dark in here. I didn't see you."

In the meantime, I watch my children deal with obscurity, washing their hands a thousand times a day and asking when they'll see their cousins. The trick to Dark Party is that you have to place blind trust in your surroundings, as though you are still young enough not to have learned that darkness is scary. I chase them through every room, making confident monster noises, and hoping they will not figure out that I — an adult — am often scared of the dark myself.

In addition to walks, I tried lighting candles, and sitting by the window all day, and using one of those lamps. But what I had not tried, was simply turning off the lights, and making the darkness a reason for celebration. My children, with their bizarre form of hygge, have forced our family to embrace the night, whether we like it or not.

This article is part of the CBC/QWF Writers-in-Residence program. More information can be found here.