Home comforts

A few days ago throughout our area, and in the whole state, we had what some called, a Nor'easter. Very strong winds which uprooted trees and blew off tin roofs so that some areas looked like the black and white scenes from Wizard of Oz. Our power went off Monday morning at 7am and didn't return until Wednesday evening. Over 60 hours without electricity is the longest outage we've experienced since moving here 26 years ago. We even lost our phone for a day which has never happened.

I've thought so much about this time without; without lights, without music, without television, without a computer (!!), without refrigeration. Even in the midst of it, I found myself feeling gratitude. We have a spring which is gravity-fed, meaning it just flows down the hill into our house without an electric pump. Though there was no hot water, we had water to drink and the toilets could flush. We also have the woodstove which kept us warm the whole time. We heated water on the stove and made pasta. We went to bed when it was too dark to read. And we did a lot of reading. Tom kept thinking that this quiet is what the house had experienced for a lot of its years; years before the house had electricity. No refrigerator motor, no humidifier motor, no sound of the furnace going on. Just silence. It was an amazing experience, and though we were happy, very happy to have power back, I am grateful for those hours without.