Storms swept through my state last week and my leafy college town took heavy damage from straight-line winds. Several houses in my neighborhood had trees blown on top of them. Chateau Lloyd was unscathed, but did lose power for about 20 hours.
The whole experience, from wailing sirens in the middle of a storm-tossed night to the eerie silence after it passed, free of any electric buzz, made a profound impression on my grandchildren, who were staying with us.
When the sun rose, I want to start our venerable generator but the fuel line had dried out and cracked (it uses propane) and so after fruitlessly calling about replacement parts, I went out to buy a new one.
By noon the replacement was up and running, and I breathed a sigh of relief that the foods in our refrigerator and freezer would survive. After those appliances ran for while, we contemplated shifting the power elsewhere, since my generator is not a "whole house" variety.
The upshot of this time was a discussion about prioritizing power use, and how to best expend our limited fuel supply. Should the outage last, we would turn the generator off overnight, knowing that the rejuvenated appliances would easily sustain and 8-hour pause.
We had been through this before, in the great ice storm of 2013, but of course winter is different than summer. In winter, the fear is cold, not heat spoiling food. The furnace was the primary focal point.
In both cases, though, we were forced to live with new constraints. Power now had to be distributed via extension cord, and budgeted against the generator's capacity.
It is all too easy to take the flip of a switch for granted, and assume that our machine-dominated life is both normal and natural. In the scope of human history, it is neither.
When the power came back - ahead of schedule - I led the family in a prayer and they embraced it with joy. Certainly it was a welcome reminder to me to walk through life with much more gratitude for the little things.