Assignments

Person: Grandma

Place: My House

Thing: Nightlight


My family is spread out like butter. Each person living in every nook and cranny across the world. Being spread out from one end to the other, weakened relationships. It’s not often that you visit their side, or they visit yours. Trying to hold on to it through virtual communications doesn’t work as well. It’s too melted for anything substantial to stick. That’s why I always try to maximize the time I have with them. While visiting, we try to cut our sleep as thin as possible. Out of all my family back home, I am closest to my grandma. She was that person who was always there for me, my family, and really anyone that needed it. Back in 2014, she came to visit for 6 months. This was the first time I remembered her visit. We carried on the tradition of maximizing our time together. We did practically everything together. I would take her shopping, help her read signs, and calculate discounts; while she would teach me new words in our language, how to cook traditional dishes and more about our family.


We started to spend so much time together that my sister and I would always fall asleep in her room. We would all squeeze into the queen bed as if there wasn’t a room next door with empty beds. But that didn’t matter, all we wanted was to be together. My grandma has this routine where she wakes up at 5 AM. Regardless of the day or the long night she had, she was always up at five. Because it was still dark at 5, she would have difficulty carefully finding her way to the door. She also did not want to turn on the light and wake my sister and me up. She started to improvise to make her own night light. She would put a cloth over the bedside lamp so that it was bright enough for her to make her way out.


This makeshift lamp was successful for the first few days, but the light began to wake my sister and me up. Although we didn’t mind being woken up, my grandma felt bad. She knew how tired we were and didn’t want us to lose sleep. The next day, we went to Target to buy her a nightlight. We slowly walked through all the aisles and finally made it to the home section. Between the pinky princess nightlights and the green dinosaur ones, we were stuck. Shockingly, there were no nightlights for 60-year-old women, which was quite disappointing. Before leaving the aisle, we saw a light green night light covered with cute little owls. This was better than our other options so we inevitably bought it. The nightlight gave us comfort during the night. It wasn’t bright enough to wake us up but spread enough light to help my grandma. For the next few months, I got used to sleeping with the nightlight. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, I didn’t think there were monsters under my bed, and I most definitely felt like a little child. But I didn't mind it, because I became accustomed to always seeing a light in the corner.


At the end of the 6 months, my grandma packed her bags and headed back home. Her room felt so empty without her and my original room felt foreign. As I slowly began to transition back into my room, I needed to make it feel comforting again, so I took the nightlight. I put it in my room to remind me of the feeling of being with her. To this day, I still sleep with the nightlight. Even though she is thousands of miles away, it feels like she's always next to me.



Oct. SDA: Podcast on Sleep Center Purpose and Structure



November SDA:

SDA

Kami Export - EMC Newspaper.pdf

Midterm SDA Part 1:


Midterm SDA Part 2: