Lights out

Reluctantly, I find myself adding power outages to the list of things, like staying up late and bingeing on candy, that were more fun in childhood than they are now.

I was eleven during the Blizzard of ’78, and it might have been the happiest five-day stretch of my childhood. We had mountains of snow and no school for a week, but as far as I was concerned, the highlight – no pun intended – was losing electricity. I wished for the blackout never to end. I compulsively flipped the light switches every hour, not hoping they would work but hoping they still wouldn’t. We kept a fire going and made toast over the open flame. We read by candlelight. We huddled together under tents made of quilts.

And yet honestly, I can’t quite remember what I loved so much about it. For a few hours, sure, but for five days? I just remember it felt so special. So old-fashioned. So rarefied.

Of course, at the age of eleven, none of the worries that an adult would have during a five-day power outage mattered to me. A freezer full of spoiled food? What did I care: the time and expense involved in buying more weren’t my time or expense. The chore of preparing meals with no oven or stove? Well, I was eleven; I wasn’t thinking about the nutritional pyramid. Cinnamon toast and roasted marshmallows seemed just fine to me. No plumbing, and no fresh water for washing hands? At that age, who worries about personal hygiene?

I wish I could recapture that feeling, and during this week’s hurricane it almost happened. I was well-prepared for the power outage when it struck at about 3:30 on Monday afternoon. I’d filled pitchers and bottles and bathtubs so that we had plenty of water. I’d planned a few meals that wouldn’t require heating. I had books and newspapers to read. I lined up candles and flashlights along the kitchen counter and encouraged the kids to dig up a few favorite board games.

But still. When the power went out, I found it relaxing for about an hour. Then I started worrying about deadlines I’d miss if I didn’t have an Internet connection and meats in the freezer that wouldn’t last much longer, and the likelihood that we wouldn’t be able to shower in the morning.

It happened at a bad time, too. Sunday evening I received word of the death of a childhood friend; Monday morning her parents asked me to take responsibility for notifying a group of other mutual friends. I sent out an email before the power went out, but their responses began flooding in once my computer was down and I had only my phone for reading and sending emails. Processing everyone’s shock and grief while reading on a tiny screen and tapping my responses on a tiny keyboard compounded my feelings of blind inadequacy at coping with this tragedy.

After dinner, we lit a dozen small candles, arranged them in the center of the kitchen table, and all four of us played two rounds of Bananagrams. It was fun, but part of me kept wishing I could enjoy it as wholeheartedly as I did in childhood.

And then I looked at my two children. They were enjoying it that much. They, in essence, were me, thirty-five years ago. Maybe my childhood delight at power outages was forever a thing of the past, but it was happening all over again in them. They were thrilled with Bananagrams. They loved the dinner of cereal and cookies. They thought washing their hands with Purell and rinsing them in a pitcher of cold standing water was a fine way to keep clean.

So okay, I told myself. I’ve outgrown the joy of power outages, but my kids still have that joy. Someday for them too it will be replaced by adulthood concerns, but then there will be more children to take delight in a household lit by candlelight. Growing up is like that: inevitably, you cast off certain childhood joys. But seeing other children come along, pick them up, dust them off and wear them anew makes it not really a loss at all.

 

Power outage: The conclusion

“Wow, this is totally a family bonding moment,” Tim observed with the jaded attitude of a 13-year-old.

One could argue that the “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it” rule applies here: If your young teen pauses mid-action to identify what you are doing as family bonding, it doesn’t exactly count. Perhaps it wasn’t the noblest of family bonding experiences – we hadn’t just scaled an Adirondack peak or sailed across the Bering Straits together -- but as the four of us crumpled our tax records from 1995 page by page and threw them into the fire, it definitely qualified as one of those rare times when we were all positioned shoulder to shoulder engaged in one common activity: namely, heating our house.

As the power outage affecting most of our town wrapped up its third day yesterday, I had to admit I was a little weary of it all, but I also acknowledged we’d gotten off easy: with my parents just three miles away and with no power outages of their own, we’d been able to enjoy hot showers, hot meals, Internet connections, indoor plumbing and all the other benefits of living on the grid simply by driving over to their house every day.

Still, despite their urging us to spend the night, all four of us felt like sleeping in our own house, so we bundled off together after dinner on Monday to start up a fire. Happy with the good that finally came out of our 16-year-old tax records, we admired the blazing hearth and then went to sleep by its warmth.

In the morning, though, the lack of creature comforts was starting to take its toll. We all awoke cold and grumpy. Tim found that he couldn’t get his contact lenses in by candlelight. Holly couldn’t locate her bookbag or lunchbox. Rick packed up his tie and jacket and trundled off to my parents’ house to take a shower before work, only to call me a half-hour later and ask if I could please bring him his shoes and socks. And the dog looked just plain furious with all of us, unable to understand why we were forcing her to live in a house heated to 45 degrees.

Yet still, when I checked the NStar website later in the day from the comfort of the library and discovered that our power was projected to be back on by late afternoon, I felt strangely ambivalent. Chilly and oppressive as the house had been that morning, I realized there was a lot of work to do once I no longer had the excuse not to do it. The fridge would need to be cleaned out. There was a sink full of dishes to wash, and of course I wouldn’t feel back to normal until I’d cleaned all the bathrooms. A hamper overflowing with dirty clothes awaited. Plus with power returned to my kitchen, I had no more reasons not to cook a multi-course dinner for my family. Out the window went all thoughts of take-out from the Whole Foods hot bar.

Indeed, the power went back on yesterday afternoon as projected. But of course, it will all be worth it, once I’ve cleaned up a little. It will be good to relax in our own home tonight, with the heat on and the appliances humming. Camping is good for vacations, but my family is clearly not eager to move off the grid just yet.

Besides, it’s not even winter yet, and we’ve heard that our new neighborhood loses power a lot. So I’ll have another couple of years of mid-1990s tax records stacked by the heart and ready to go, and we’ll look forward to hours more of family bonding once winter begins.

Power down

As I write this on Sunday evening, we’ve been without power for fourteen hours. This is very rare for us; I can’t remember a time since my childhood that we went for more than about six or eight hours without power, and even those events have happened only two or three times in the past decade, as far as I can recall. But this time, with a heavy wet snowfall on Saturday night pulling down power lines all over the state, we are facing the kind of situation we usually hear about but avoid: already a full day and evening, and potentially several more to come, without electricity.

And I have to admit, I’m finding it hard to think of anything to say about it that isn’t a cliché. Everything positive about power outages has already been said by the many who experience them more often than we do, and yet now that it’s our turn, I’m finding them all to be true: the way it’s made us focus on the simpler things in life – reading by candlelight, savoring a grilled cheese sandwich made over a gas burner – the fact that it has imposed upon us a mandatory hiatus from our Internet connections, with the constant chatter of email and Facebook; the strange reality that all four of us are sitting together on the couch in front of the fireplace reading or writing, rather than dispersed into four different parts of the house, engaged in four different activities. Even the dog seems to want nothing more than to sit in front of the fire, gazing into the flames.

Because this kind of crisis happens to us so rarely, I’m admittedly a little lax when it comes to the fundamentals of emergency preparedness. But this storm has taught me that what I’ve done in that realm is apparently good enough, at least for the first fourteen hours of a power outage. The half-dozen bottles of water stored in a cupboard have been enough so far for drinking and washing up. We had batteries for all the flashlights, and all the flashlights were easy to find in their usual places. We have candles and matches. Because it’s still autumn and because it’s our first year of living in a home with a fireplace, we hadn’t stored firewood yet, but the logs we sawed this morning from tree limbs that fell into our driveway during the storm ignited fairly easily and have kept us warm. It’s reassuring to know that even without scurrying around preparing for a storm, we’re pretty well equipped to manage one, although I should also admit that not until this evening have I understood why people fill bathtubs and washing machines, and I’ll remember to do that in the future.

Waking this morning to the not unexpected realization that we were without power, my first thoughts were of the many duties I would not have to do today; a rush of welcome laziness swept over me, and I slept an hour later than I usually allow myself. I also keep thinking how relieved I am that this situation is the result of a weather system and not, say, a terrorist attack or an earthquake, something with far more profound implications than a simple snowstorm. Sunday was one of the most peaceful days I’ve had in months, maybe even in years. Rick and I cleared limbs and sawed logs together all morning; the kids, absent their usual temptations of TV and video games, shoveled snow together and then put my iPod on speaker and danced.

Later, we went to my parents’ house and played card games. In the late afternoon, my mother and Tim and I took a walk up to the soccer fields and around the cemetery. Back home, the four of us warmed ourselves around the fire.

It will get more challenging as the days pass, if the power isn’t soon restored. I won’t feel so peaceful or tranquil if I’m unable to meet my work responsibilities due to our Internet connection being down. (Even as I write this blog entry, it’s with the awareness I’ll have to find a hot spot to post it if we’re still lacking electricity in the morning.) But for now, all is dark and quiet. Tim remarked on the visibility of stars in the sky with no house lights around to detract from their glow. Like a 19th-century family, we all went to bed early, when the cold and dark simply made it unappealing to be up any later.

It’s all been said before. But this time, I had the chance to find out for myself what it was like. And for now, it’s a very serene moment in time for us.

Horseflies, or the lack thereof

Only in the past year or so have I picked up the habit of wearing a hat when I run, and this is mostly due to increased conscientiousness about sun protection.

Yesterday morning, though, I headed out without my hat, noticing only about three minutes into the run that something felt different. “Oh well,” I rationalized when I realized what was missing. “It's still so early” – it was just a little after 7 a.m. – “I'll be running mostly in the shade anyway.”

But then as I looked at my dog just ahead of me at the end of the leash, I remembered the other reason a hat has been useful these past few months: because of the prevalence of horseflies. If I wear a hat, they leave me alone, but I still see them clustered around the poor dog's ears and clinging insistently to her haunches.

At least that's typically the case. But it wasn't yesterday. No horseflies pestered my hatless head, and I saw no horseflies near the dog at all. When I thought about it, I realized I hadn't seen any all week.

And so I knew I had to add horseflies to the long list of negative factors that I notice only when they're present and then forget all about in their absence.

For me, the most obvious example of this occurs during power outages, and coincidentally, we had one just two days ago: the first since the winter, when we had an outage that lasted about six hours. If you ask me while the electricity was on whether I could go an hour or two without it, I'd say of course I could: quite happily, in fact. And yet within minutes of the start of an outage, it seems I think of a dozen things I urgently want to do that require electricity (or running water, which because we have wells rather than a public supply is also unavailable when there's no electricity, or Internet access). When the power went out earlier this week, I shrugged it off at first: the weather was pleasant, and we were using neither heat nor air conditioning; and unlike the more typical power outages that occur midwinter during snowstorms and ice storms, we still had hours left of daylight. I was even mostly done with my writing for the day. So it didn't seem like a big deal.

Except that I soon realized I wanted to wash the lunch dishes, and run some laundry, and use the vacuum cleaner, and look up a few items on line regarding our upcoming vacation, and send my editor an email, and...and all kinds of things I couldn't do without electricity. I never really appreciate all it does for me until it goes out; conversely, when the electricity is on, as it is now, I never stop to think what a pain it is to lose power.

Sore throats are another one. Every time I get a sore throat, I wonder why I haven't been spending more time feeling grateful for the lack of pain in my throat. Car trouble, too: whenever everything is running smoothly in the automotive sphere, I forget what an imposition it is to deal with car problems.

Looking at the dog as we ran yesterday, I reminded myself to take note of the lack of horseflies around her and also around me. It's hard to remember to be grateful for everything bad we don't have at any given time, whether it's horseflies or power outages or far more serious problems. Yesterday, while running, I remembered for a few moments, and felt more grateful than usual.

Lights out

I woke up early on Sunday morning. Partly this was due to the time change with daylight saving ending, but it was also due to an insistent “chirp” from the hallway – the warning sound from a smoke detector battery that needs to be replaced.

I grumbled a little bit to myself, but then remembered that at least it was Sunday rather than a weekday and my husband Rick would probably have time to change the battery before too far into the day. I know this is something I should be comfortable doing, but our ceilings are so high and our ladders so heavy; I’m much happier to leave it to him.

But when I opened my eyes to see what time it was, I saw that the digital clockface was black. The smoke detector was chirping not due to battery malfunction but because the electricity was out.

When I was a kid, I loved blackouts. I thought they were exciting beyond description, especially when they accompanied a big snowstorm. I was eleven during the Blizzard of ’78, when we had five days of snow and the same amount of time without power. It’s hard for me to fathom now, but I loved every minute of those five electricity-free days. I loved the coziness of sitting by the fire and the novelty of playing board games with my sisters all day instead of being in school. I thought it was fantastic that we drove to my grandparents’ house, 45 minutes away, to take showers.

This is yet another example of how impervious kids are to adults’ feelings. My parents must have been miserable, being without power for five days, and yet I couldn’t have been happier.

Now I’m on the other side of the equation. I’m one of the adults who gets anxious and grumpy when the power goes out. Since we have a well rather than public sewer, no electricity means no running water, and anything romantic about it is quickly dissipated in the reality of no hot showers and no flush toilets.

And yet on Sunday morning I felt differently. I couldn’t use my computer because it has no battery, so I didn’t even have to struggle to resist the temptation to check email. Sunday is the one day of the week that I never exercise in the morning – it gets too rushed to try to fit in a workout before church, so I always wait ‘til afternoon – so I wasn’t too concerned about the lack of shower.

“The kids are going to be cross about the breakfast options,” I acknowledged to myself. They eat cereal during the week; hot cooked food like bacon and French toast are typically a weekend treat.

But I could already feel a sneaky grin spread across my face: Sorry, kids, no bacon, no French toast. You know I’d cook you a big complicated breakfast if only I could, but gosh, no electricity today! How about some cereal? The milk is still cold.

As anticipated, the kids were irritated indeed when they awoke. Days full of board games and reading are great, in their estimation, but by choice, not by imperative. All they could think about as they faced this long, quiet Sunday was the absence of any possibility of computer fun, video games, televised football, and of course bacon and French toast. Tim dispiritedly went out to pee off the edge of the kitchen porch. I mentally apologized to the neighbors.

After they’d had some cereal, I convinced them to come out to the barnyard with me to feed the animals. As we were putting our boots on, the hum of appliances and the warm yellow bath of synthetic lighting filled the house once again, and the smoke detector was silent.

I’d like to think the kids’ exuberance as we headed out to feed the cows was the result of fresh air and exercise. They chased each other, played with the dog, raced up the ladder to the hayloft, flung bales of hay down to the animals, chased each other some more on the walk back home, the very embodiment of youthful vitality. But, of course, I know better. What was fueling their delight wasn’t fresh air; it was the realization that awaiting them at home was a working furnace and a hot shower. Breakfast was long over, but they managed to get me to promise I’d make bacon for lunch.

I couldn’t blame them much, though. I never fail to marvel at the sense of exhilaration I get whenever a power outage ends. Even after just two hours without electricity, it seems like the greatest luxury imaginable to be able to use the oven, the computer, the bathroom.

The rest of the day seemed to go better due to this inauspicious start. Everything seems easy once the electricity goes back on. And, rather surprisingly, the kids are continuing this week to help me in the barnyard every morning. Apparently it doesn’t matter so much why they had so much fun; they just remember the fun itself, with tag and haybale-tossing.

And that, to me, is a fair tradeoff for their expectation that Sunday mornings should rightfully begin with Mom making bacon.