Alone to the Max When the Power Goes Out
It's not necessarily a bad thing
I knew the electricity was going to fail. All afternoon, wind thrashed the Oregon coast, rain fell like bullets, and thunder shook the walls. Alone in my house, I felt like a nervous cat. As the lights flickered, I made dinner in a hurry, praying for enough power to heat my leftover fish, vegies, and raviolis.
Halfway through dinner, the lights went out and all the machines in the house hushed. In the twilight, I lit one of the candles I bought at my neighbor Shirley’s estate sale, along with the two battery powered lanterns I keep handy. Power failures are not unusual out here. During last year’s ice storm, some coastal areas were without electricity for a week. I’m always prepared.
After I finished eating, I packed up my leftovers and started a fire in the woodstove. I wasn’t cold yet, but with the heaters off, I soon would be. When I first moved to the coast, I didn’t know how to build a fire, but that was years ago. In a few minutes, I had a hot blaze going.
I had planned to fold the laundry while watching “The Bachelor” on TV. That was not happening. I played guitar for a while, finding my way through whatever song came next to my head. Then I played my mandolin, improvising, guessing, figuring out songs. It’s more challenging when you can’t see the frets.
My cell phone chimed with a text. Someone checking on me? No. My internet provider saying we had an outage that they expected to clear up within the hour.
The hours passed. I tended the fire. Somehow, I could still play solitaire on my phone, so I did that until the battery was almost gone. I could read on my Kindle, but only books that I had already opened. I found sister Antioch MFA grad Andi Cumbo-Floyd’s Love Letters to Writers, such a comforting companion. I’m almost finished with Book II now. The light against the dark hurt my eyes, so I put the book down and stared at the fire.
How many times have I done this, sat here by the fire while a storm raged outside, lightning flashing every few minutes, thunder following almost immediately? At any second, a tree could fall on my house. I couldn’t help wondering what I would do if I could no longer haul wood or get down on my knees to light the fire. Maybe that will never happen. Years of yoga and lots of walking have made my legs strong and flexible, but no one stays young forever.
About 10 p.m., I put on my pajamas. It was too cold in the bedroom, so I set up my bed on the couch, blew out my candle, turned off my lanterns, and surrendered to the darkness.
Around midnight, I woke to lights and computer-waking sounds and stumbled to my bed.
In the morning, the sun was shining, and the neighbor’s rooster was crowing again. I learned that this outage was huge, affecting a very large area. Quite a few customers were still without power.
The news included photos of trees on houses and cars, the usual thing. I haven’t found any damage here, and I’m grateful. When you live surrounded by trees . . .
It was a good reminder of how easily our lives can be thrown into disarray. No power means no cooking, no heat, no light, no electronic media, no electric blanket, no plug-in clocks, no plug-in landline phones. Everything that needs to be charged—phone, laptop, tablet, hearing aids . . . will soon run out, unless we go outside and charge them in our cars.
You might think I’m crazy, but sometimes I hope the power will fail. I think about turning everything off and camping by the woodstove. Why? It shaves away all the excess clutter in my mind and my life. I can just write or read, exercise or play music. I feel so free—as long as it doesn’t last so long that my food spoils and my hearing aids die. The screens ruling our lives go blank, and our world is reduced to a more manageable size.
People pay big bucks for such a retreat. Or they hike for miles carrying a backpack. This is free, and I can stay home.
If someone else were living here with me, it would not be the same peaceful experience. They might be bored or need help or insist on doing something together. Let’s play a game!
No thanks. Peace and quiet. Ahhhh.
I don’t have to be alone when the power fails. I can ride out the storms with my neighbors. They would welcome me, and it might be fun, but at least for a while, I want to savor the profound silence on my own. I can finally hear myself and maybe also hear God amidst the rain and thunder. Just to sit and be is a gift.
Until the batteries in my lanterns run out and my ice cream melts.
Your turn. How do you handle storms when you’re alone? What do you do when the power goes out, especially if it’s extremely cold or hot? Is there somewhere you can go if you need help?
Photo by Sue Fagalde Lick
Welcome to our many new subscribers. I hope to keep giving you reading that is both helpful and enjoyable. I see that some of you have purchased the Kindle version of my book Shoes Full of Sand, about my early years in Oregon. Thank you. The five-dollar deal for autographed paperback copies is still available. Check, cash, or Paypal. One caution: Please don’t post your financial information in the comments. We have a lot of readers, and you shouldn’t take the risk.
You might be interested in the latest post at my Childless by Marriage blog: Will You Ever Find Peace with Your Childlessness?
I will be in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico for a few days in the middle of March. If anyone lives there and wants to get together, let me know at sufalick@gmail.com. I will also be in Los Angeles for the AWP conference the last weekend of the month. I’d love to meet friends there, too.
See what I did? I reached out. Yay, me.
How did I end up alone? My first marriage ended in divorce. My second husband died of Alzheimer’s after we had moved to the Oregon coast, far from family. I never had any kids, only dogs. Now I live by myself in a big house in the woods. You can read our story in my new memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, available now at your favorite bookseller. The Kindle price has just been reduced! Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.
Random thoughts...I have a gas stove so I am able to light it with a match if I wanted to heat something but more than likely I would just make a sandwich, grab some chips and call it dinner were I to be without electricity.
My sister game me a lantern so I can read and even charge my phone if I need to. I can carry it around with me while I light candles in my house to make it more cheery looking.
I really liked your line about turning off the screens although you need not have missed the TV show that you were planning to watch because you could have watched it on your phone.
Planned silence is a gift you can give yourself so if you want it just turn everything off.
I have an issue of getting off my recliner if the power goes off when I am sitting in it because it uses electricity to power it. So, if the electricity goes off while I have it in a reclined position, I have to pull myself out of it.
Loved the picture of your stove.
One other suggestion is that you can put yourself in a tub and have a lovely bath by candlelight.
I don’t mind the power going out either, I have a wood-burning fireplace. But I agree that I don’t want it out for so long that food spoils or it becomes too inconvenient. How very privileged of me. But the gift of being able to sit still in the quiet that is inside and outside the house and hear God is incomparable.