MY SISTER-IN-LAW, Yanni, says her grandma always had to sleep with a light on. Yanni once asked her why. Her grandma said that when she was growing up on Little Diomede, an island in the middle of the Bering Sea, there was always the light from a qulliq as she went to sleep. With only darkness at bedtime, the air felt suffocating.

That’s the only story I know of someone who grew up with the light of a seal oil lamp. Maybe my gram, too, went to sleep with a qulliq when camping with her family in a white wall tent. But now, like most questions that spring up in adulthood, it’s too late to ask.

I didn’t see a qulliq until I was a senior