Blinded

At our house, we believe in darkness. 

Actually, we believe in darkness and nightlights.  This means that when we go to bed ALL the lights are off, ideally, and our kids never learned to go to bed with the hallway light on, their door open, or any such idea.  We have blackout shades in our master bedroom, and the kids' rooms always have had dark blinds.

When we redecorated two bedrooms for Oksana and Nasreen, however, I decided to go with a light-filtering shade.  I guess I was thinking that this way they could have privacy without being completely in the dark, unlike the master bedroom.  Originally Audrey's Dad thought disagreed with me on this, but we decided we could add drapes if needed.

Much to our fascination, both girls always seem to sleep with their blinds open.  It is so strange to us, because we think of it as making the room colder, noisier, and letting in light when you're trying to sleep.  Also, even though some people don't mind changing in front of any open window, Nasreen is intensely private about changing her clothes, so she will get up from bed, close her blinds, change, then re-open them.  It's kind of a hoot.

This morning Audrey and I were out walking in the darkness, on a path behind our house.  Nasreen was just starting to wake up, and I looked up at her window.  I had to chuckle at the brightly illuminated Pakistani flag on her wall shining through the open window.  It honestly looked like something out of "24" or "NCIS".  But thankfully no agents dressed in black came to investigate.

It makes me wonder if Americans, or maybe just us, are more obsessed with sleeping in the dark than other cultures?  Pakistanis live much of their lives in the after-dusk cool, so perhaps they are used to sleeping when the sun is shining brightly?

One more thing to mystify me.


P.S. I seriously hope Oksana is as happy without us as we are without her.  The tension in this house has dropped about a million percent.