The power went out and came back on 8 times while we slept. I know this because I got an email from my alarm system every time it went off and turned back on. At 5:00am it went off for the last time. I woke up in our king size bed and was the first to go to the kitchen. The dim light from outside struggled its way through the back windows. We knew a storm was coming, but I didn’t expect to see the feet of snow that covered everything in my backyard. It was the most snow the state had in 60 years.
Huddled in my robe and already wearing long pajamas and a long sleeve shirt, I went to our 3 car garage to dig out some camping gear. I found a kettle and a portable battery charger we used maybe once hiding under barely used air mattresses I would need later. I could see my breath as I shuffled back into the dark house.
The portable battery had enough power to operate the coffee grinder, but not enough to run the coffee machine or the electric tea kettle. We didn’t have any pre-ground coffee in the house. Only the expensive organic whole bean stuff from Costco.
The pilot on the gas stove was electric. I knew I had a long lighter for my BBQ pit, but that was outside in a storage box under a foot of snow, and no way I was going out there in my jammies. I went back to the garage and dug around in my tools. Thankfully I found a cigarette lighter, an old souvenir from a trip to Colorado a few years ago.
I lit the stove and put on some water to boil in the camp kettle. I dug out our barely used French press and made a pot. I put a Mag light upright in a travel coffee mug and was able to make breakfast while everyone was still nestled under their blankets. My kids slept soundly upstairs in their own rooms along with my mother-in-law.
The house was still new, only 6 months old, so it had top of the line insulation with new seals around the windows and doors. The thermostat said 65, so I knew we had some time for the power to come back on before it got uncomfortably cold.
The internet was down of course, and we lived on the edge of town so service was spotty, and I didn’t have a strong enough signal to explore social media. My emails were still coming in. School was cancelled. The district anticipated the storm, but they didn’t anticipate the almost state-wide power outage. We were supposed to go virtual, but since most everyone lost power and internet, they shut everything down.
My wife was next to get out of bed. She stumbled sleepily into the kitchen, obviously perturbed the power was out. “Look out the window,” I said. And when she did she let out an, “Oh my gawd!” at the mounds of snow. There was a snow drift on our back porch. I hadn’t even looked at our street yet. When I did, you couldn’t determine where the cul de sac ended and the sidewalk began.
Eventually everyone woke up. My 6 year old and 3 year old were excited about the snow. The fact the electricity was out didn’t even enter into their minds, they were only disappointed the TV didn’t work.
I kept waiting for the electricity to come back on. We all did. Usually if the power goes out, it’s only out for a few minutes. The minutes turned into hours. A seed of fear sprouted in my mind. How long? I took all the cold packs out of the freezer and put them in the fridge. Our fridge, also new, would probably hold up. I just needed to keep checking the freezer to make sure things didn’t start to melt.
The water still worked.
Then we began the task of finding things to do. The TV, Playstation, iPads: all useless. With no power or internet, and spotty service, the magic windows of entertainment lost all function.
We played board games, read books, made art. We covered the upstairs playroom with toys. My kids have forgotten about more toys than some children ever get. We have donated more toys than I can remember and every birthday and Christmas we got rid of more. They pile up, unused in corners of closets, random boxes, and are found under furniture. I often wonder where they all came from and if there is some kid out there who would rather be playing with them. There was another camp kettle my daughter played with as part of her toy kitchen. It was filled with wooden IKEA vegetables. I emptied it and took it downstairs just in case we might need it.
The sky stayed overcast so even at the height of the day and with the blinds open in the house, there was still a dim grey fog that fell like a veil over the unlit house.
My mother-in-law stood at the back window staring at her icicle-coated bird feeder. “Do you think it’s frozen?” she asked. She clutched a ziplock bag of sunflower seeds and had already thrown some on the bare patches of concrete on the back porch for the birds.
I needed to go out there anyway. I needed to find that long BBQ lighter. I put on some boots and my warmest jacket. Outside was biting. I’ve never felt a cold like that in my life that I can remember. I tromped through the icy powder, my feet sinking several inches down to the lawn. I wanted to get to the side of the house where I knew there was a shovel. I just hoped it wasn’t hiding under 2 feet of snow. I found it leaning against my mother-in-law’s $1,000 greenhouse. The plants inside were shriveled and limp.
Back to the porch I pushed all the snow off. My kids looked out through the back window still in their PJs and robes, wishing they could go outside. I didn’t want them to. Not with the power off. There would be no way to get them warm. That seed of fear was growing. We were now under a boil water notice, so the two camp kettles were coming in handy.
Across the state people were struggling to stay warm. Peoples’ water shut off. The roads were too icy for people to travel to get bottled water. Grocery stores were closed anyway with no one able to drive to work. Delivery trucks were grounded so they couldn’t restock if they wanted to. The temperature remained below freezing. People were dying, freezing to death or choking on carbon monoxide from heaters they used to keep warm. Houses burned down from closed fireplaces. Children were dying. And mine wanted to play in the snow.
I shoveled the snow off the porch. I noticed a dove fluttering around against the wall under the windows. There was a small snow drift about 3 inches high it was trying to get behind. Other birds were silently zipping around, trying to find footing on the fence. I went off the porch to the bird feeder. The seeds were coming out fine, so it wasn’t frozen. I also stopped at my outdoor box and struggled to open it with the weight of the snow on top. I grabbed the long lighter and tromped back to the porch. Before I went in, I saw the dove had hunkered down behind the little snow drift and next to some muddy shoes that had been left outside. I watched it close its eyes, I supposed for a nap.
I told my mother-in-law the feeder wasn’t frozen. She spread some sunflower seeds on the porch anyway and before long more birds came, grateful for the snack away from the snow.
The water pressure diminished; what was once a normal stream was now only half as strong. As the day went on, the clouds persisted. The house got darker. The thermostat said 60. We blew up the air mattresses and put them in our master bedroom so the kids could sleep with us. We grabbed every blanket and sleeping bag and piled them on our children still with their PJs and robes on. They got flashlights and battery operated nightlights. They laughed and giggled and shined the lights in each other’s faces and on the walls. I scolded them for jumping on the air mattresses. Before 7:00, the house was pitch black.
I went to my son’s room upstairs. He had a large window that looked out across the neighborhood. His room was freezing which reinforced my reasoning for making the kids sleep in the master. Through the window there were no lights. On a normal night, house lights were on, streetlights shone down an orange haze, cars still passed. But there was nothing but a weird stillness in the dark. The white snow reflected whatever light was pushing through the unmoving clouds. White ground, black houses, cold silence, as if everything were hiding from some invisible monster, too afraid to move or make a sound.
The next day there was still no power. News was reporting people melting snow to flush toilets. Our water was a trickle now. I filled up the bathtub in case we needed it for drinking or flushing the toilet. That rooted fear was beginning to sprout, flowering in my mind like a poisonous plant.
My mother-in-law peered longingly out of the back window at the birds. Out of boredom, I went out to our shed to get more bird seed. The latch was frozen under a half inch of ice, but I was able to break it free. I grabbed the half full 50lb bag of bird seed and lugged it to the porch.
When I got there, I noticed the dove from the day before nestled in its napping spot. It was still there. I nudged it gently with my foot and it’s stiff body slightly rolled, it’s frozen neck never swaying. I’ve never heard of a bird freezing to death, but this one I’d watched it’s eyes close the day before for the last time.
I spread bird seed on the back porch so we could all watch the birds eat. Our cats sat at the windows, wide-eyed and curious. The kids looked on uninterested, but they had nothing else to watch. Every once in a while, another dove would creep cautiously to the dead one as if to check on it, but would sadly flitter away.
The water had almost stopped completely. I had to scoop out water from the bathtub to hand wash dishes. We ran out of eggs.
That night, after the kids had fallen asleep, the power came back on.
There’s a strange comfort during crisis. You focus on the moment, the present time, with little concern for the future. You forget all that’s outside of your circle of control and build a fence to protect yourself and deal with what is at hand.
Then began the slow thaw. The snow had turned to ice but everything beneath it had melted. You could see rivers of melted snow running under the thick ice by the sidewalk. The sky cleared to a joyful blue without a brush of white.
The internet was restored. I read the horror stories of suburban survival from the past few days: Roofs collapsed, pipes burst, water leaking through ceilings. People had to use their fireplaces for actual heat and cooking, not just commodity. My wife had to go to work at the hospital and pee in kitty litter because the water was shut off. On her way she saw cars abandoned on the highway, some on their sides or upside down like a post apocalyptic frozen wasteland. Her fellow nurses had spent 36 to 48 hours at the hospital, sleeping in empty rooms so they could avoid the hazardous roads but still be there for their patients. At least they never lost power.
I buried the dead dove under the $150 squirrel-proof bird feeder.
When we strip away all our modern conveniences, our TV, internet, cell phones; when our infrastructure fails and we no longer have heat, running water, readily available food, we are no better than the dove. We should be reminded how fragile we are, how vulnerable. People died, children died. Even with our modern miracles of science and state of the art technology, when it is all taken away, we are all just doves looking for a place to close our eyes.
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