The first day of the outage I was spared but the following
morning I woke up to no heat or lights. Even though the house was 50 degrees inside
I thought I could tough it out. I’d been camping in cold weather but I’d
forgotten how nice it was to warm up with hot coffee, a
campfire and going inside a tent rated for use in Alaska. I became obsessed with
wanting a cup of coffee. It wasn’t until the second morning I was without power
that it dawned on me that I could bypass the electric igniter on my gas stove
by using a match. Last month I had almost thrown out an old box of instant coffee during
a purging session and as I heated up water I smugly told Marie Kondo, “See, this is why
we keep stuff!”
Tidy Girl Kondo’s name came up a few times during the
outage.“Marie, I wish I’d kept that
propane heater that my husband used at disability deer hunting camp!” “Marie, I’m
glad I didn’t throw out my drawer full manuals because you said they’re all online. You
can’t google without Wi-Fi!” If I had done that I wouldn’t have been able to
figure out how to get my garage door open during the outrage---not that I’d
drive with all the ice, but I envied neighbors using their cars to get warm or
charge devices. But I couldn’t reach the power
override cord and I doubted I could have lifted the oversized door if I could
have and I wasn't about to fill up the garage with carbon monoxide. I also had an old cassette tape player that I couldn’t figure out how to
open without its manual. I’d kept the player because I have cassette tapes of
an interview I did of my dad back in the ‘80s. But I bitched at Marie Kondo for
guilting me into donating a bunch books on tape. I only kept two.
The first night after dark I laid under a mountain of blankets
listening to A Knight in Shining Armor,
wishing I had one. Late afternoon the second day the house was down to 42 and I wasn’t
looking forward to the other book, The
Grapes of Wrath which is about the hardships of the Dust Bowl, hardly something
a woman fearing that she might not wake up in the morning wanted to hear and at
one point I thought about Scarlett O’Hara at Tara saying, “When this war is
over I’ll never go hungry again!” I couldn’t even make a peanut butter sandwich
because I keep my bread in the freezer and you can only eat so many sardines
and crackers before you start speaking with a Norwegian accent. By then I was
wishing I could google ‘chilblains’ to see if I had them. I was getting the
shivers that started deep under my ribs and I was so sleepy that I knew I
should do something but I didn’t know what. My phone only had 10% battery life
left, even my emergency dialer needed charging. I turned them both off so I’d
have some power if I had a true emergency requiring 911. And that decision probably saved me a world of hurt.
One of my Gathering Girls pals knew I was without power and
when she tried to text me and it wouldn’t go through she got worried and sent
her son-in-law over to check on me. He turned out to be my Knight in Shining
Armor. He introduced himself and offered to help me turn off my water and drain
my pipes and talked me into coming back to M.J.’s house where she had already
taken in five other power outage refugees and a dog. Her son-in-law
could have literally saved my life because I know I would have just politely
refused an offer to come over if it had been sent in a text. When help was
standing in my living room it was too tempting to refuse. I was so cold and
there was no hiding it, as bundled up as I was.
M.J. is the only one of my Gathering Girls pals who is a
Trump supporter. On the second morning I was at her house, she got a phone call
and one of the first things she said was, “We have the same thing here. We’re
avoiding watching CNN and FOX.” The conversation went on for ten minutes about
the “witch hunt.” When she got off the phone I told her it’s fascinating that
two likeable ladies like us with similar upbringings and life experiences could
view the world so differently and that I blame that on having so many cable
channels with too many “news commentary” shows. She agreed. Then she did a monologue
about how Trump doesn’t get enough credit for undoing all the “bad things that
Obama did" and he was getting the world to respect us again after Obama’s disastrous
presidency. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I sat there listening without speaking and when she finished I said, “We should probably change
the subject but first I want to say that it’s amazing to me that all the
words you use to describe Obama are the same words I use to describe Trump.” It
was all very civil, like two friends trying to figure out the answer to a calculus equation.
When I got back home I was telling my niece about the
conversation and she said words to the effect that the big take-away was that
we (meaning everyone) need to quit judging each other along party lines and start
judging each other by the humanity we show each other because
dividing our country is exactly what the Russian disinformation campaign was/still is
all about and we can't let that happen. In my case, a Trump supporter took me in at a time of need. We played a few
board games, had a great time and she doted on Levi to the point she became his
“aunt M.” By the time her son-in-law was able to take me back home my
Gathering Girl pal and I had deepened our friendship and I wish I could figure
out a way to thank her. I was truly touched by her kindness and generosity. ©
