Powerless
A steel-hard rain tap danced furiously on the window ledges while strobe lightning backlit the clouds in an electrified dome over our heads. Straightline winds bent the limbs of the young mulberry stand parallel to the ground, stripping the looser berries from their branches and throwing them in the grass for the overnight possums and our feet to find later, once the skies were emptied of all this drama. It’s not really summer until you’ve walked barefoot from the deck to the car, staining your feet a spectacular and nearly indelible bruise-y purple. Thank goodness for dark blue washcloths in the bath.
Patrick had begun packing for Sundance earlier that day, slowly covering most flat surfaces in the living room and kitchen with groups of themed items (bath/personal care, handcrafted giveaway gifts, clothing for two weeks, food/eating utensils, medicine). It looks like a small garage sale that had moved indoors without the price tags. We’re used to this annual ritual, interrupted only twice in twenty years, confident that it will all eventually migrate out the front door, across that mulberry-shaded deck and into the car. Between here and Indianapolis, whatever he remembers he forgot to pack can probably be found on the shelves of a store on the other side of some distant outerbelt. But last week, when the storm hit, the temperature was sitting stock-still at around 92 degrees, challenging the humble floor fan to reach the humid corners of every room and somehow freshen them a bit. Our collective attention turned to the home base and away from the grassy prairies of Sundance grounds. The downpour left the creek swollen just to the edge of breaking the banks, which meant our sump pump would have its work cut out for it in the next twelve hours. We started filling gallon jugs of water for drinking, bathing and toilet-flushing just in case. All around, a good helping of the kind of drama and distraction that usually accompanies the days leading up to Patrick’s departure. I had just asked if the generator was in working order when, as if on cue, the house went dark and silent.
For the next two days…as the temperature continued to climb and the humidity made the air around us thickly sliceable…
In those first couple of hours, while the lightning stalled over the acreage in a seizure-inducing dance club spectacle, we lay motionless in our airless bedroom, confident that soon, (soon?), the power would click back on and we’d go about our pre-Sundance normal after a good night’s sleep. I was still holding on to that illusion the next morning as I grabbed a gallon jug of water and bent over the side of the bathtub to wash my hair before going to work, thankful for a pixie haircut that is most forgiving in the absence of a hair dryer. I told myself I looked sleek and fashion forward.
At the office, a couple of coworkers who lived in their own versions of “middle of nowhere” were also sporting “sleek and fashion forward” hairstyles; I felt a rush of affection for our shared circumstance and kept the comments to a gentle minimum. But I was in air-conditioned comfort while Patrick slugged it out with the generator back home under a searing sun, no cooling fan to ease his brow. I wondered if he’d sidled up to the lifeless freezer just to feel the cold metal against his skin for a moment. I wouldn’t blame him if he’d opened the door for a flash, just to grab one of the still-solid ice packs and hold it to his forehead. Twenty minutes away, I sent emails and drafted well-earned letters of recommendation for some of our pre-med student volunteers, not even breaking a sweat. We were both where we needed to be but not necessarily where we wanted to be. Misery loves supportive company.
We’ve had power outages before and muscled through them just fine, reminding ourselves that we’re made of pretty stern stuff and can transition to a raw food diet rather easily. One summer when Patrick was out west, a derecho roared through the land and in thirty minutes, had plastered the side of the house with leaves of all sorts, remnants of a half dozen cottonwoods, sycamores and blue beech that now lay quietly on the ground, their trunks snapped in winds the likes of which I’d never known. I went without power for a week that year (2012, I think it was), sleeping on the couch downstairs with the front door open, watching the shadowy shapes of baby raccoons on the other side of the screen, checking to make sure I was ok at 2:30 in the morning. After three days, the freezer and fridge had never been so clean. And empty. It helped to be on vacation, not needing to make myself presentable for anyone who mattered. Blessed line crews restored power to our far-flung little neighborhood at the tail end of the substation’s reach one day before Patrick arrived back home. We celebrated with wonderfully hot spaghetti and meatballs and a lovely Malbec. And yes, the fan turned on the highest setting, with enormous gratitude.
Doing without is the rolling lesson here, folks, and I’m glad for its recurrence in our lives. Shakes us out of our complacency for hours or days at a time, pulls skills out of storage, dusts off our survivor capabilities until we almost start planning for an off-grid existence. Almost. The older we get, the harder it gets, plain and simple. But the refrain “as often as we can, for as long as we can” gets us through to tell our stories for another day. I keep nattering on for an outhouse and an outdoor shower. Maybe this will be the year we get those in place. Until then, there’s plenty of other work and distractions about, tapping me on the shoulder. The weather report for the next several days looks hot but not stormy.
I’ll take it.
