We lost our electric Monday night into Tuesday morning. It rained here, that’s all. Yes, that is all it takes for our Dayton Power & Light connection to be zapped into oblivion. After this last outage, the DP&L Robo called us and said that the number of residents affected by the outage was two. Yep. Two.
You know how certain parts of the country get identified with their weather patterns?
The coastal south for the hurricanes. The northern states for the brutal winters. Tornado alley in the heart of the country. California for its earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, drought. Okay, California wins the prize.
Anyway, here on our little road in Preble County, Ohio, I am certain we have more power outages than anyone. Anywhere. Except for Puerto Rico. Our longest stint was 12 days after Hurricane Andrew blew everything over in our neck of the woods. I’m happy if our power comes back on in eight hours. We never get it restored any faster than that. Most of the time, it is a couple of days.
It’s not like we live in a cave, for crying out loud.
For years, we had a small generator. It would operate a couple of rooms, a refrigerator, a few outlets. We’d string extension cords all over the place, and hope that the weather didn’t get too hot, or too cold. No heat. No air. We couldn’t cook. Last year, we replaced it with a jumbo- gargantuan-generator made for King Kong. Now we have good power, but we hold our breath, hoping our propane tank will keep the thing churning along.
It all makes me grateful. When our generator kicks on, I give good thanks for its presence. I think about those times in war when people suffered so. Like in WWII Europe, when so many lived for years in shelled-out buildings, with no power, no water, and little food, as foreign soldiers marched through the streets. The people huddling in darkness, never knowing.
There are many places in the world right now without the luxury of electricity. And of course, some places don’t have enough food or water. And I sit, in my nice house, in free America, with the generator rumbling outside the window. And I’m reminded to give thanks.
Right now our country seems to be under a massive amount of stress, with a virus sweeping its way across our land, our economy falling down the dark hole of fear, and people divided, with human rights and environment, on the one side of the chasm, and money matters on the other.
It brushes up against us in one way or another. We watch. We wait.
Right now, it is raining outside. It just started a moment ago. We may lose our electricity again, who knows. But I do know that the rain won’t last forever. Eventually, this weather system will move eastward, on to other places. Things here will dry out, once more. The sun will break through, and shine. Eventually. The light switch on the wall will work again.
That’s how our world goes. One minute, it may seem problematic, daunting, exasperating. But it will change. Something will be different, sooner, or later.
And we live. And we breathe.
And we turn our own lights on when we can. Lighting up the world.
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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato
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“May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
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“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
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