Without warning, the great freak Fall snow of 2011 came. On a lovely Saturday afternoon, we lost power around 1:00 pm. I thought it would come back shortly; no big deal. By the evening, David had gone to edit and still no power. Which meant of course, no lights, no eating (since I didn’t want to open the fridge and let all the cold air out) and worst of all no heat. But I still felt grateful. ’cause I had my Iphone and my Ipad which were both reasonably charged. Surely, this power outage wouldn’t last long– we’d never had an outage that had lasted more than 1/2 day.
Fast forward five days. Five days of being in the dark, five days of coming home to a cold house, five days of no food, since by then we had to throw all the food in the fridge away. Thankfully- for both her and us– we gave our entire freezer of food to someone who was going through a bad time, and literally without food. I thought of all the things I took for granted, a warm toilet seat, the ability to work at home, the luxury of not walking around with five layers of clothes and a blanket around me to keep warm. I know I should be grateful every friggin’ minute of every friggin’ day– and yet instead, no doubt, I become cranky over whatever, and slip into complacency. Live even one day, much less five, without power and see how much we take for granted. Eric Hoffer wrote: “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” I already am drawing up a New Year’s resolution to ask for after school tutoring. I need it.
