The Blizzard

I know better than to gripe about the blizzard of 2013.  I was fine.  I lost power and therefore heat. I lost phone, TV, and internet, but I had gas hot water and stovetop.  (The oven is gas as well, but it requires electronics to turn it on.) I’ve talked to a guy who lost power to his electric well pump and had to carry buckets of water from a nearby pond to flush his toilet.  Presumably he had to break the ice to dip it out. 

 I could even shower, and if I ran the water for a few minutes before I started, I could warm the bathroom up enough so I could actually take my clothes. I had a fireplace and plenty of wood.  I had a battery powered L. L. Bean LED lantern and an LED book light so I could read after dark. I had a cell phone that could be charged in my car. I was glad I prefer down comforters to electric blankets. 

In 1978 I was in a plane taxiing toward a runway in Mexico when the pilot announced that there was a blizzard, and airports were closed up and down the east coast, but he could get us to Atlanta.  I wanted to yell, “Let me out.”  It was lovely in Mexico, and it turned out to be cold and boring in Atlanta.  Still I was lucky.  I got there early enough so there were still hotel rooms so my family didn’t have to sleep in the airport. 

I grumbled that I was missing all the fun at home.  In those days a storm was an adventure.  I see that same attitude in younger people now.  The young man who brought the water in from the pond surely got cold hands and feet, but he liked telling the story. 

In times like this you learn what you can do without.  We were a week without television. This morning I turned on the TV to catch the weather report and ended up wasting 45 minutes learning things I didn’t need to know.  Ten minutes after the phone was restored, I hurried to answer it, and a telemarketer tried to offer me a business proposition.

Lugging wood and being cold made me tired.  The temperature inside my house was 40° and went down to 35° on the third day.  My mind seemed sluggish.  Sometimes that which does not kill you weakens you, and sometimes it makes you strong.  That hammock on a tropical isle that I fanaticized about might not be as strengthening as a New England Winter.  My survival of the storm doesn’t make as good a story as dipping buckets of water out of an ice-covered pond, but I look on it as an achievement a little more romantic than fighting the winter traffic on the Gulf Coast of Florida.