Changing Light and Playing Cards

 

When we first arrived in France on June 20^th, it was light until nearly 11pm. By 6am, the sun was up. At 48 degrees north, Treguier is even farther north of the equator than Mullett Lake, Michigan where Christopher and I were married and where my extended family has spent many summers. Now that it is September and we are nearly 7 degrees farther south, all of us have noticed that the hours of light and dark are equalizing. We now have to turn on the lights to play our nightly game of cards.

A quick aside about cards, which has become a great ritual and is excellent family time: Porter always seems to win when we play Whist, no matter who his partner is for the night; whereas, there is a more even distribution of victories at Oh Hell, Spades, and Hearts. After listening to "Around the World in Eighty Days" Porter was inspired to learn Phileas Fogg's favorite game, whist, and looked it up. It has been a great addition to our rotation. When playing Oh Hell, the boys often bid on non-trump cards. When they do, I can hear the voices of my aunts Sally and Gloria, my uncle Pat and of course my father grumbling about playing with amateurs. I laugh as I find myself shaking my head in disbelief, channeling my elders, at Porter's and Jack's inconsistent bidding styles.

This morning, it was still pitch black at 6 am and too dark to read at 7:30. The gift, of course, is that it is not hot until late into the afternoon. It is no surprise, then, that when we anchor off a beach, we have it all to ourselves until nearly 2 pm and the real crowds don't arrive until after 5:30 or 6 in the evening.

It is a well known concept that climate influences culture and yet it is all together different to experience it and to watch the boys identify it. There is little wonder about the need for a siesta in the middle of a hot day. All of a sudden, it makes sense that the stores are open in the morning and evening and closed during the heat of the day. What I am interested in is how we as a family adapt to the changing light and patterns ourselves. Christopher's New England puritanical roots bristle when we all stay up until midnight and don't roll out of bed until after 8; but on the west coast of Spain in the late summer, that pattern makes sense.

-Molly