The hail was the first thing to wake me up. First a light patter, like pennies falling off the counter and onto the floor, but then it got worse. Thunk. It sounded like someone had thrown a rock at my window. For a second I thought it might shatter, spilling wind and rain into my hair. It didn’t. It was 2 a.m.
I listened to the hail, took a deep breath and tried to fall back to sleep, and I think I did, for maybe 4 minutes. Then in an instant, I heard everything stop: onrushing quiet, like a door closing on a soundproof room. All the electrons flowing to my house were cut off, and silence descended. The ceiling fan slowly spun to a standstill. For a moment I heard nothing but the wild onslaught of rain and hail. I waited.
Beeeeeeeeeep. I got up. I walked in the darkness to my office, where the beeeeeeeeeep was presently emanating from the backup battery attached to my computer. The storm howled beyond my office windows, and I stood for a moment and gaped at the positively gigantic, seven-story oak tree two backyards over.
Have you ever seen a humongous broadleaf tree swaying in a Midwestern summer storm? It is an incredible sight. The canopy oscillated back and forth at an impossible-looking frequency. The trunk seemed like it was tilted 45 degrees. Damn, live wood is flexible. This thing was really holding on. A less healthy, more brittle tree would have broken, but the neighbor oak merely leaned. Its main limbs, rising from the trunk like a sun salutation, flapped absurdly. The tree looked like one of those flaccid windsock guys at a used car lot. I almost laughed.
Then my toddler started crying, and I heard a plaintive “I’m scared.” I silenced the alarm and stepped into her room, and she asked me to turn her nightlight back on.
“I can’t. The power is out,” I said quietly, sitting on her bed.
“But I want you to turn it back on,” she insisted.
“I know, but the power went out. A tree probably touched the power line in the storm. We don’t have any electricity.”
I stood up and went to open her curtains, hoping to let in the residual streetglow. Just this once, I wanted to welcome the obnoxious blue-white glare of the new LED streetlamp down the road. But it was out, too. The whole street was dark, and the one to the east, and to the west. The storm still raged.
“It’s too dark in here. Mommy, I want you to turn my nightlight back on, please,” my daughter said matter-of-factly.
I realized I needed to explain. This was not her first power outage — ah, aging St. Louis utility lines — but it was the first one she would experience, as opposed to ignoring as an oblivious infant. I wondered what it must feel like to suddenly go without a thing you have never lacked. It would be weird to be bereft of something so ever-present, it is practically a nutrient. A thing you can’t really understand but have never been unable to access, since the second you arrived in your own skin.
Saying we depend on electricity is like saying we depend on a place to sit. Its presence is deeply wanted and appreciated in any place where a human might linger for more than a little while, especially after the sun goes down. Sure, chairs and electricity are not essential for life, but they certainly make life better. People can and do live well without them, but many of those people would still like to have them, all the same, and development goals aim for fulfillment of those wishes. Electricity and chairs are essential to my functioning as a grownup in a Western country. This also means they are things whose absence has shaped some of my most transformative experiences, those times when I have been asked to take in the darkness, and to kneel.
“It’s kind of like water,” I told my daughter. “When you open the faucet, water comes out. But when you turn off the faucet, water does not come out.”
She blinked. She is 3.
“The power comes to our house all the time, and it keeps your night lights on. It keeps the street lamp on and the clocks. But right now it is not working, because a tree fell down in the storm and the power line fell with it.”
“Did the tree get broken?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so. I don’t know which tree. But workers will have to come in the morning and fix the power lines, so we can have electricity again. There’s nothing I can do right now, so we just need to try and go back to sleep,” I told her.
I promised to stay until she slept, and I did.
Not long after, I heard my dog scrambling down the stairs, claws trying to find purchase in the dark. She is terrified of thunderstorms, but her hearing is fading — this one didn’t even wake her initially. Then I realized she was following my husband, who had already disappeared into the basement. The sump pumps. Oh god. It was just before 2:30 a.m.
I knew he would refuse to let it flood. I brought a second lantern downstairs, and saw my husband crouched in the sump room, using our iced tea pitcher to bail it out and pour the still-rising water into the sink nearby. I told him to just let it happen, and started Googling water-cleanup companies on my phone, until he reminded me I should save my battery. He would spend another five hours down there, controlling the sump pits by hand. I did not sleep.
After a time, I went back downstairs to check on him, and a weird golden glow caught my eye on the staircase. A light the color of ripe pineapple. The sky had cleared, and the light was pouring from the almost-full moon. According to the app I use to track these things, the moon was 99 percent illuminated that night. It was about 30 minutes from setting in the west-southwest. I walked out my front door. The air was cool and fresh. I saw no human-made light at all, and the moon lit the entire neighborhood. It was 4:05 a.m.
I stepped into the street. I knew it would be empty in that pre-stirring time, the end-of-night solitude, the Bible-black predawn. There are no cicadas yet, and the fireflies were asleep. The moon was my only source of light and I was alone with it. I liked this moon, a version I don’t see often; usually I stay awake for the silver version, the one in my eastern window, the brighter and more familiar one. This amber-toned moon shone differently on my skin. I studied my arm where the moonlight landed. It was older than time.
It took crews almost 14 hours to restore our power, and the entire thing was mostly extremely frustrating. But for those moments before the moonset, I was grateful for that hailstorm.
Photo credit: International Space Station astronauts captured this view of the Midwest on January 31, 2012. Chicago is visible at the bottom of Lake Michigan, at right. At left, appearing in a straight line across from Chicago, is St. Louis. Follow Interstate 70 west to Kansas City, and again to Denver, whose light is just barely visible at the top of Earth’s curvature.
Some years ago we had a major outage in our neighborhood. Our power is underground so it’s the only outage we’ve had in 25 years. Power went out just before sundown. Slowly, as it got dark and power didn’t come on, people emerged from their houses. It didn’t take long for word to circulate that the power would be out for hours. Kids, sans video games, began to play in the street. Parents bereft of TVs first started talking, then pulling BBQs out. Fridges were emptied of beer (it’s just going to get warm). Flashlights were found. People barbequed hamburgers and dogs by headlamp. It was THE MOST FUN we’ve had in our neighborhood. Ever. I kinda wish it would happen again.
It *is* kinda fun, isn’t it? In the morning, neighbors came out and walked down the street to see the damage, which included a giant tree that fell onto the lines and into the street. The arterial road was closed for almost two days as crews repaired everything. It was nice to run into people as they found new ways to navigate the neighborhood.
When I was a kid we moved to the country, where the power would go out at least 3-4 times a year. It became a treat – Mom would get down the oil lamps that sat on the mantel and actually light them, get out the old board games or a deck of cards and we’d gather in the living room and play games by firelight. It was just so QUIET.
There was a big October snowstorm in Connecticut, when the trees were still in full leaf. Power was out three days for us (longer for others). But we have a well!
I filled big jugs at work 39 miles away. That worked. Drink, wash, flush from jugs. But we heard siren call. We bought a generator — just in case.
Years later came “super storm” Sandy (i.e. hurricane). Power was out for 7days. Generator did the trick. We ran it twice a day to keep the fridge cold and flush the toilets (still using the occasional jug). We never integrated it with our “shore” power, but just ran a bunch of extensions. Worked fine. If you are in a power outage prone area, try for a generator. No need to run it full time.
When I started reading this, I thought, “wow, that’s exactly how our outage went a few weeks ago,” then I realized it was the same storm, and you were probably in the same blob on the Ameren outage map we refreshed and refreshed.
Our son’s two, and while he slept through the night, his confusion the next morning has led to a daily litany: “Last time a tree fell down / But not in our backyard / And the light didn’t work / But there was thunder?”
This is a good post! The moonlight and quiet and still so unexpected!
Hey, are we neighbors?? Ha, my daughter still talks about this almost daily, and also says “last time” — only her version is something like “last time, a tree got broken and we didn’t have a power!”