Boggle by candlelight

I woke today to a raging windstorm (and no, it wasn’t my husband bloviating). Thankfully I got in a good long shower, some yoga, my daily bowl of oatmeal and a few minutes on the heating pads to further loosen my stiff back before the power blew.

I just shrugged my mental shoulders and continued with my PT exercises.

Outages come more frequently around here and last longer than they used to - our little Mayberry has expanded in the last couple of years but the power company has yet to upgrade the infrastructure. A lot of people in the ‘hood are getting upset about this - but secretly, I like blackouts. (Of course I like them better in the summer, and I definitely like them better when I can call the automated outage line and they tell me when service will resume.)

No, really. Some people tell me the lack of infrastructure – the sighs and moans the house makes when the electrical appliances are humming - makes them nervous. It’s not simply that they miss their electrical conveniences; they just can’t stand all that quiet. Not me. While I like my microwave and computer as much as the next person, I can do with a bit of quiet every so often. And if you listen for a while, especially during summer outages when you can open the windows or sit outside, it’s really not that quiet around here. Even in the winter with the house shut up tight as a drum you can hear the birds tussling around the feeder, the whip of the wind through the bare branches, the whinnying of the horses in the next field. I can identify each neighbor by the sound of their cars, which kids should zip up their coats because their bus is coming up the hill. In summer, it’s the splash of a child cannonballing into a pool, the rustle of the leaves, the rush of the rain, the coyotes in the distance. OK, outages at night are initially inconvenient – all that hunting about for candles and flashlights and batteries, fretting if the basement will flood as we sleep. But reading a favorite book by candlelight? Getting together with neighbors for “blackout parties” where we bring whatever is in the fridge and throw it on the grill, crack open a few beers and tell outrageous stories from our youths? Actually talking to people instead of getting together to watch a game or a DVD? One blackout my husband’s cousin was visiting, and we lit all our candles and set up a Boggle game. (warning: never play Boggle with anyone who has high-functioning autism – they’ll kick your ass) Boggle by candlelight is awesome. And we were playing and talking and I was really enjoying just the sound of our voices and imagining how life would have been in the eighteenth century. Getting water from the pump, lighting the whale-oil lamps when the sun went down.

And then with a blink and a beep, the electricity went on. My husband and his cousin let out a mutual whoop of relief. They left skid marks as they dashed off to reset clocks, restart the video game they’d been playing when the lights blew.

I felt…disappointed. Abandoned. But, I thought, watching them settling back into the sofa with their remote controls and snacks, you can’t put this genie back into the bottle.

Perhaps we should initiate National Blackout Day. One day a year, cut your house off from the grid. Not just as an energy-conservation measure, or a protest against our dependency on foreign oil, but to remember our roots. To bring us back together. Let’s pick a not-too-hot summer day. One with a nice breeze and a awe-inspiring sunset. You bring the beer. I’ll bring the Boggle.