Powerful Outage

How cool was that October storm? Well sure, I could see that you might see it as a major inconvenience. If the Spinner house is like others, we lost hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. But you have to admit, to take your life down to brass tacks, to strip it to the bare necessities (light, heat, running water, food, friends and family) was kinda cool. How many of us will never take for granted that when we flick the light switch, we get light? Wasn’t it sobering to be reminded that we are animals on a planet, a sometimes violent, unpredictable planet?

Walking up North Street from The Jorgensen’s that fateful Saturday night, it felt more like Christmas than Halloween. The wind was whipping large flakes of snow, the trees were sagging, some were down already. With my family safely at home, I stopped in the middle of the street. Every few seconds I heard the crack of a tree giving way under the weight of all that wet snow. I thought to myself: this is going to be really bad.

About 10 o’clock that night, Kira and I were sitting on our living room couch, our three boys asleep in bed. The fireplace was roaring and I had a cold ale by my side. Throughout the day there had been flickers of power loss but just after 10 o’clock there was an outage with a POP. Kira and I both knew it was the big one. We sat in silence, then she said, “That didn’t sound good, I’m going to bed.” We said good night. I grabbed my flashlight and continued to read by the fire.

The power was out but so many other things were ignited. Reading my book by the fire I could feel what life was like for our forefathers. I sat, thinking. Immediately, we all started to problem solve. Okay, what do we need to do to get through this?

We started to live our lives by the sun, a primal instinct. For most of us it was, early to bed, early to rise. Once the sun went down, we gathered by the fire to read and play games as a family. All of my boys thought, this is fun. We stoked the fire, we gathered candles and blankets; we lived, like pioneers, by the rising and setting of the sun.

Speaking of Pilgrims. Alright, maybe we weren’t speaking of Pilgrims but at least descendants of Pilgrims, Connecticut Yankees. Many of us were driven by an altruistic nature to help our fellow human beings. We felt the need to help friends and family, neighbors and strangers.

By Sunday morning it was evident that this was a long-term outage, we formulated new plans…I knew that I was welcome in any number of places, which was heart-warming. I knew that if I picked up a phone, or showed up on a doorstep, I had myriad houses I could go to. I would be welcome at my Mother’s or Kira’s Mom’s or Kira’s Dad’s house. We were also invited to: the Weizners, the Grices (which is where we went) and the Swierczeks…

Steve Swierczek texted, “Wow that sucks. Keep it together man, kids are gonna sense your anxiety. Easy for me to say but no one in ur family’s hurt and you guys like camping.” That stuck with me as my wife and I managed our family through the challenge. I had this awareness that my boys were watching, that it was a teachable moment, proof positive about all of the things we’ve been preaching about hard work, persistence and positive attitude.

I failed miserably, at least twice that I know of. Kira and I led the league in hissy fits. My boys were incredible, inspirational really. Of course they were unaware of bills piling up and they could give a rat’s pitooty if they shower at all but they were very helpful, and patient. Not one of my boys complained after hearing the news that Halloween was cancelled. Kira bitched a bit about missing X Factor. They did their best to keep the fire going and did the back-breaking work of cleaning up the yard. As a family we traversed the tri-state area, buying supplies and sleeping in any number of places. The fellas treated it as one big holiday.

We were welcomed with open arms by my friend Ian and his wife Sharon and their two boys. I never got the feeling we were putting them out, which is the key to taking someone in. A lesson I hope we learned. Ian’s boys had school on Tuesday so in an effort to do something educational, I took the boys to Princeton University. What a special place; if you ever get the chance, it’s one of the nicest campuses I have ever visited, even nicer than SUNY Buffalo!

While on a tour of the Princeton campus with Morgan Robinson, one of my former students (another nice outcome of the power outage was a chance to catch up with Morgan) Kira got word to me that the South Brunswick Home Depot had a generator. I high-tailed it off the University grounds and up Route One. In trying to read the GPS and drive the car safely, the tension was mounting. The market for generators was pretty liquid. Nicholas, my oldest son, made a joke from the passenger seat. I started to shoot fire from my eyes, “Nick, now is not the time for jokes!” To which he replied, “Dad, you’ve always said when times are toughest, that’s the time to make jokes.” My heart melted, I could hear myself and I could hear Swierczek’s message, “gonna sense your anxiety…” I slowed the car and said, “You’re absolutely right Nicholas. This is the perfect time for humor.”

Kira and I kept reminding each other, when one of us was losing it, “We’re all healthy, it’s an inconvenience.” I kept saying, “We’ll be laughing about this in the summer on the beach.” I had to duck a few times as Kira tried to bust me one in the mouth toward the end of the week. It really hit home while I was watching the pre-game for the LSU/Alabama game Saturday after the storm. There was footage of a devastating tornado that ripped through Tuscaloosa this past April, killing many. ESPN did a story about ‘Bama’s long snapper, Carson Tinker, who was hovering in a closet with his girlfriend (Ashley Harrison) during the storm. When the tornado sucked their house apart, it tore his girlfriend from his arms. His body was thrown a hundred yards from that spot, he had some injuries. Sadly, Ashley did not survive. Looking at the damage, and hearing the story of this tornado, confirmed the mantra we had been repeating... We’re all healthy, it’s just inconvenient…

So it has passed, and we are starting to laugh about it. We are cleaning up. I am sad for the beautiful magnolias and dogwoods on our property that didn’t fare so well. But I see the trees that survived, like Brian’s pine tree, Charlie’s cherry tree, Nick's Japanese maple and the sugar maple we planted with Papa Bill and Suzanne. Taking inventory, we see the resilience of nature and the toughness of the human spirit; all kindled by our “loss” of power.