Darkness Good

“Where is the flash light? It was right here in the drawer!”, Josepi said. There was a hint of panic in his voice.

“… .. … ….. ….”, said the girl.

“Could you please speak up, sweet pea?”, said Josepi.

The girl took her C-3PO mask off.

“I said, it’s in the Death Star!”, she repeated impatiently the way kids do when grown ups are too slow to get what they’re saying.

“Don’t take things out of the kitchen, my love! You never know when daddy might need them…”

“But daddy! I need my light saber!”

“Oh! In that case, young Jedi, I AM YOUR FATHER!”, Josepi changed his voice to Darth Vader's, “AND AS YOUR FATHER I’M ASKING YOU: GO TO THE DEATH STAR AND BRING BACK THE LIGHT SABER FOR DADDY! KHHHH HHHHH…”

The girl giggled as she felt her way through the completely dark living room towards the Death Star: a makeshift teepee-like structure assembled out of ski poles, chairs and blankets.

The generator had enough juice to keep the heat up for now. With negative 52°F outside, it was wise to turn off all the less essential stuff.

That meant no TV, no video games and no WiFi either! Who knows how long before the gas runs out. Some of those blackouts can take hours if not days! Josepi threw a couple of logs into the stove just in case. The illusion of motion from the fluttering shadows made everything in the room seem unstable and fleeting.

Vera stayed in her comfy chair. She was a little out of it since the surgery but she seemed to be doing much better. If there was anything she could be bothered by right now, the city wide power outage rendering everything pitch black on an Alaskan winter night would be on the very bottom of her list, that’s for sure!

“Mommy? Are you asleep?”, Kirima whispered quietly just in case the answer to her question was ‘yes’.

“No, honey. I was just thinking about some things…”, Vera answered after a slight pause.

Kirima sat down on the floor beside her feet.

“Are you afraid of the dark, mommy?”

“No. Not anymore… How about you?”

“Not with you and daddy around”, said Kirima, “but why do you think people are so afraid of it?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe because everybody always keeps telling them that darkness is bad and over time they just start to believe it…”

“Maybe it’s like with the Dark Side of the Force? It’s dark so it must be bad, right?”, said Kirima.

“In stories yes, but not in real life, darling! People always told stories about darkness being bad. Maybe it's because they worry about things they can't see that might be lurking in the dark. They prefer to see everything clearly and if they can’t, they just don’t know what to do so they sweep all the dark things under the rug, except…”

“Except… what?”

“Except darkness is everywhere and light is just a tiny speck, like a faint star blinking against the night sky.”

“You mean like Death Star?”

“Almost…”, Vera laughed, “...but Death Star was just a dark, man made object with a very confusing name. You see, stars are larger and brighter than we can imagine, yet in the grand scheme of things they are still overwhelmed by darkness. And as for death... Well, death just is...

"But, death is sad!", Kirima pointed out

"Yes. Darkness and death are sad only because of our emotions but when we think about them calmly, they seem neither good nor bad…”

Josepi came by from the kitchen with three cups of tea and sat on the armrest of Vera's comfy chair.

“Looks like I walked in on a very serious discussion", he said, "and I think, mommy is onto something here”, he pointed the flashlight towards his scruffy chin.

“If I shine the light like this, you will only see parts of my face. Light doesn’t brighten things entirely and sometimes it distorts familiar objects to the point where we can barely recognize them. The dark is always with us, no matter how hard we try to shine our light. See?”

He distorted his face into a spooky grimace.

“Wow! Daddy! You look like a monster!”, Kirima gasped.

“Stop frightening her, Josepi! Now she will never fall asleep!”, Vera worried half jokingly.

"A Jedi is never frightened!", Josepi winked at Kirima.

“But when is darkness good?”, the girl asked.

“Well, that depends”, said Vera.

“On what?”

“Let’s say, you are a tree…”

“I’m a tree!”, Kirima stood tall with her arms outstretched.

“You've got a trunk and branches and leaves or perhaps needles. You stand there proudly, doing your best to always turn your crown towards the sun…”

“So…?”

“So... What about the rest of the tree?”

“The rest?”, Kirima asked.

“The root systems. They stretch far down into the dark soil even further than their top branches reach up into the sky but people always forget about them. The parts that are in the dark are very important, like roots are to trees but the thing about roots is that they can be easily forgotten when they're out of sight…”

“Ooh! I know! I always forget about the roots when I draw trees but from now on I will always try to remember!”, Kirima pledged.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, Darling!”

“Do you miss daylight ?”

“Sometimes I do but much less now…”

“What would it be like if I couldn't see things at all for the rest of my life?”, Kirima asked and closed her eyes very tightly, "When I close my eyes all I see is darkness. It makes me sad..."

“Well… It would feel strange and sad at first but with time you would just forget what it was like to be able to tell light from dark."

"Cool!"

Sudden buzzing sound brought the lights in the house back to their former glory.

The sound of the generator died down. It was hard to believe how excessive the lights now seemed.

“Daddy? Can we turn the lights back off?”, Kirima asked. “I decided to cross over to the Dark Side of the Force with mommy!”

Kirima found her Darth Vader mask, put it on her head and settled snugly in her blind mother's lap.

Josepi turned the lights off. Since his eyes adjusted to the dark, the flashlight was no longer necessary.

The northern lights now stretched over town matching their graceful dance moves with the flames inside the stove.

Everything else was darkness.

And God knew it was good.