Fast and furious would be the words to describe an unlikely wind storm named Isaias. (It’s not pronounced “Isaiah-s” like the prophetic book of the Bible. It’s pronounced ees-ah-EE-ahs.) At exactly 2:34 p.m. on Tuesday, August 4th, while I was down in my pandemic, rough-and-ready, underground workspace, a blanket of darkness suddenly fell upon me. A ruckus ensued from above as my children screamed like headless chickens. “We lost power!!!”
The first time my three kids experienced an extended power outage was after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. It was a brutal seven-day heat fest in late August. At the time, I ran a preschool at my own home, with only three students, ages 2, 4, and 6, and they were all mine.
These preschoolers have grown to be semi-independent juveniles with the internet injected into their veins. About a decade ago, the blackout was fun. They played hide and seek using flashlights. Now they looked like drug addicts going through withdrawals. They were not motivated to do anything in the house without air conditioning. These kids looked more dead than zombies as they lay around on sofa and beds. I, too, had sunken that low at one point. I just wanted to lie in bed and sleep through it all if I could. But I couldn’t. I was being baked alive and soaked in sweat like a roast in a convection oven.
It was easy the first day. But we quickly reached a point of bewilderment when I found out one out of three homes in Long Island had just lost power. I heaved a heavy sigh and knew it would be a while, a long time before our power can be restored.
It was not bad the second day, either. We had gathered all the sources of illumination from our last camping trip. And that the Mom in me had got a plan.
When the third day rolled around, it wasn’t so easy. There was a test of mental toughness. It’s tempting to call it a day, surrender to the incompetent and strained electric company, and sit and stare into space. This posture of surrender met the least amount of resistance. Or, I could make the most out of it by decluttering and cleaning the house after months of lockdown. Without the internet, I suddenly had too much time in my hand.
I don’t know about the others as I am too self-absorbed to ask. How often do you clean your house now? Most well-to-do folks might have fired their cleaning ladies. With the constant activity at home, I am almost certain most homes during and after the quarantine are out of control, grimy, and dusty. Because mine was, and still is, to some degree. Although we spend almost all of our time at home, we have no motivation to clean because no one is coming. There is only so much the robot vac can handle. The wiping down and dusting still have to be done. The clutters still have to be moved. Now we can’t seem to give away anything because the charity had stopped making their rounds and friends stopped asking for hand-me-downs.
I went off on a tangent. Back to the story.
On the fourth day, my willpower began to weaken.
“Mom, we are bored. We are taking our bikes to 7-Eleven to get a Slurpee.”
I’ve homeschooled my kids for ten years, and my son and daughters never went out on their own.
“What…? Are you sure you don’t want to walk there? Isn’t walking safer?”
Their dad had taken them to 7-Eleven on their bikes many times, but it just seems safer for them to travel at 3 miles per hour on foot.
“Mom, we are fine. Ge Ge (big brother) knows the way,” my youngest always ended up making a deal.
After some inner turmoil and a resolution to loosen the kite string, I hardened my heart to let them go without me.
I gave my 14 and 11-year-old a Jackson and told them to get whatever they wanted from 7-Eleven. I positioned myself by the window, praying they would not run into any peril or delicate situations. My wait for their return seemed like an eternity.
Growing up in Taipei, I walked to my kindergarten by myself at age 5, and I bought my own snacks at age 7. But here in America, they say that would constitute child neglect, and that kidnappers with their windowless vans patrol the streets looking for unguarded children.
So I waited until my son grew to be taller than me before I let him out on his own.
At long last, the pair came back with one Slurpee each, along with chocolate bars and chewing gum. I forced them to share the drink with me. After one gulp, the icy, sickly-sweet slush went down my throat and woke up all my senses. I never knew Slurpee could taste that good!
The lockdown and power outages combined took us back to the 70s, where boys sport long hairdos and sit on their porches, and girls hang out and giggle on the sidewalk holding onto their pink bikes.
LOOKING FOR THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD
By the fourth day, I felt I must establish my existence in another realm. I could not live in the physical anymore. I was slipping, losing the will to fight despondency.
Power outage or not, a habit formed is a habit that shall carry me. My daily Bible reading on that day showed me two strange verses from Luke 24:5-6.
“The women were terribly frightened and bowed their faces to the ground but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised!
What is the context here? That was the first Easter Sunday, three days after Jesus’ crucifixion and burial. Some women prepared to embalm Jesus’ body as their custom. After they arrived at Jesus’ tomb, they saw two men in “dazzling shining clothing” who said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He’s not here, but has been raised.”
There are many ways for these “angels” to deliver the resurrection news. Like a town crier with the story of the day, a surge of adrenaline should cause them to shout, unreservedly, about a dead man walking. Instead, they cheekily tilted their heads and asked this question.
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
As the charge percentage of my laptop approached the dismal 10%, I pondered about this strange statement. And I let out a chuckle as if I finally got the joke.
That was exactly what we were doing during the power outage – looking for the living among the dead. I mean we were looking for signs of hope in a map that shows nothing new but incidents and cases of the widespread power outages.
For days, we were obsessed with the PSEGLI Power Outage Map. It was quite pathetic. My phone that runs on the Verizon network would uncharacteristically stall each time we tried to refresh the screen. I would then be hypnotized by the pulsating, spinning dial. My son and daughters would then join me in the hypnosis session as they, too, were eager for updates.
On rare occasions, my phone would escape the nasty spells of the internet Snow Queen, and we would be so excited to see a complete outage map. And then we’d be baffled by the cryptic symbols and statuses. What added to the frustration was that each new update looked different from the previous ones. The initially estimated restoration was on Thursday, the third day. And then it got pushed back to Friday, and then Saturday. On Wednesday, we had a brief moment of excitement when we saw a hard hat symbol within a 5-mile radius. Then when a friend got the power back on Thursday ahead of schedule, we believed that would be our case too. However, our hope slipped further away by the minute on Thursday. Our hearts sank when we saw the projection was further pushed back to Saturday night. That would be another sixty hours of waiting. PSEG sent out e-mails daily assuring us of their valiant efforts and promised 85% of the residents that lost power would have it restored before the weekend. We did not make the cut to be the fortunate 85%. When you don’t have electricity, a minute feels like ten minutes, an hour feels like half a day and 60 hours? I thought about booking a hotel room.
Why were we so desperately looking for the glimmers of hope among the “dead” of the outage map? Each time we looked, we were disappointed. The map changed, the estimated restoration time changed, the status changed.
God’s Word snapped me out of it that Friday morning. “Stop looking for the living among the dead.” At that moment, I decided I shall no longer place my hope on the dead. I will walk out of this power-less tomb.
TIPS TO SURVIVE PROLONGED POWER OUTAGES
To endure a prolonged power outage, you need to, first of all, toughen your mind. You have to fight the impulse to be lazy. You cannot just abandon your normal course of the day. You still need to carry on, and you must adjust. A California mom, who has experienced frequent power outages, taught me to lay ice on every shelf of the fridge. You’d do that every day to keep the refrigerator cold. The freezer can last 2-3 days with this method. I learned the hard way that after the 3rd day, the freezer’s condition would quickly deteriorate. For that reason, if a friend or neighbor offers their valuable freezer space, immediately grab your half-thawed chicken and slimy dumplings, run or drive the meat over right away!
Another mindset adjustment is to pretend you are on a high-end camping trip. That’s how you’d enjoy cooking on the butane stove, and that you’d actually want a home lit with ambiance lights and candles at night. We got Smoko lights from a cousin last Christmas. More than just a fanciful décor in a kid’s bedroom, they became lifesavers as they stood guard in the bathrooms at night.
One of my favorite sayings is, with limitation comes creativity. Who would have thought an empty clear vase with an LED flashlight could emit so much light?
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL (NO PUN INTENDED)
I began to enjoy the night’s quietness without the loudness of the TV until the neighbor behind us decided to beat their limitation with a budget generator. It’s like having a jetliner getting ready to take off in your backyard, except the plane was not going anywhere. The persistent whooshing noise was so maddening that we had to shut our windows in the 90-degree heat.
On the third night, much to our relief, the noise stopped. Either it was because the weather cooled off, or there was a death threat by a neighboring young mom with a baby.
By Saturday morning, the buzz around the block was the 11 p.m. estimated restoration time. Fingers were crossed. But, I was living my best life because I stopped caring about it. I became a naysayer. I said I could go on without power for another week. I went to sleep at 10:45 p.m. on the sofa and drifted off as quick as a flash.
Then in my drowsy, non-REM sleep, I was abruptly woken up. My kids let out a loud gasp. We heard a weak, audible electronic beep, then it trailed off. A second later, a single, higher-pitched ding went off. Before you know it, all the lights were on, and the AC condenser started its monotonous hum. I screamed my loudest scream that can probably be heard all over town. Our windows were open, but I didn’t care.
I stayed up till 1 a.m. to clean out the freezer. I loaded the dishwasher. And I moved back to my bedroom on the second floor. Words could not describe what it felt like to have power again. It was su·per·ca·li·fra·gil·is·tic·ex·pi·a·li·do·cious!
I have been sharing the living room with my older daughter all throughout the power outage. The second-floor bedrooms were unlivable and unbearable without a fan or air conditioning. In our last night in the dark, she asked me, “Mom, are there people that need the power back sooner than us?” I was surprised by her question. She had been antsy and upset by the slow response from the electric company.
I thought about it and said, “Maybe for people that are very anxious, upset, and mentally burned out by it? They have put their hope on the Power Outage Map. They sit around waiting, complaining, venting, ranting, and demanding to have their power back. I think these people need it back before us. These people are not doing so well in the outage.”
People who put their hope on dead things will not do well under duress. Our assurance is in a God who has the power to sustain us from the inside. I can relax and let Him rule in my heart. How about electricity and WiFi? They feel more like icing on the cake!
POWER-LESS
During those five days, I had more time to think. I was thinking about inequality and systemic bias.
Our block has been consistently left behind in the electric company’s power restoration efforts. My block waited seven days for the power to be restored in 2011 after Tropical Storm Irene and sixteen days after Super Storm Sandy in 2012. My theory is that we live too close to the border of Queens. As the electric company deploys its crew and they work their way from the middle of Long Island, our block probably ended up on the bottom of the list.
I was then inspired to write an allegory. Yeah, no kidding, an allegory.
MR. SMITH’S NEIGHBORHOOD
The Smith family lives on a block marked out to be the ZONE of INTENTIONAL NEGLECT, a neighborhood likened to a skid row in a big city. The legend has it that this zone is condemned since long ago to be the NO POWER district. While the rest of the country enjoys an unlimited supply of electric energy, those who live in Mr. Smith’s neighborhood are deprived of such utility service.
Mr. Smith thinks hard and sees that he has two options. Either he cries foul and protests, or beat the odds and move. On the other hand, life has to go on; Mr. Smith and his wife have to put food on the table. Mr. Smith is a friendly man, and he knows many people that live outside of their neighborhood. Noticing their plight, his friends often invite them to charge up all of their devices. Mr. Smith is very grateful and does not turn down help. He finds that he can get just as much done once he has an 8-hour worth of battery life on his devices.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith learn to be resilient and resourceful. They teach their children to suffer well, to buckle down, and not to complain. They say they have a free life lesson to teach their kids how to navigate and survive in the ZONE of INTENTIONAL NEGLECT. They tell their kids that life is not so bad here. It only gets hard when you compare and envy those that live with power. “Comparison is a poison,” Mrs. Smith often reminds her children, “just be glad that some people have power so that we can go and ask them for help.”
Mr. Smith eventually saves enough money to buy a home outside the ZONE. They are ecstatic. As they pack up for the big move, his neighbors are rounding up the youths and tell them to march to the beautiful home that belongs to the Chairman of the electric company. They urge the young to set the Chairman’s house on fire. “We need to show him we mean business. We can’t live without power any longer.” They say the problem is with the Chairman.
Mr. Smith is a curious man, and he wants to see the Chairman’s estate. Taking a break from packing, he follows the crowd. After a short march, he catches sight of the sprawling mansion. In front of them stands a bulletin board with a notice, a notice dated a year ago.
To the citizens residing in the town known as the ZONE of INTENTIONAL NEGLECT:
After months of investigation, we have discovered the glitch that prevented power from going into your homes. Power has since been restored. Please reset your circuit breaker.
At Your Service,
Chairman of Your Electric Company
Mr. Smith is overjoyed. He kicks himself for not reading the notice about the restoration a year ago. Even though he is about to move out of the zone, he is happy for his neighbors. Just when he looks to give a fist bump to the people in the crowd, a few youngsters run ahead and pour gasoline all over the property. In shock and disbelief, Mr. Smith yells, “What are you doing?! We’ve got power now!”
“And what took them so long to tell us! We suffer for nothing!”
The entire zone is then wiped out by the fire. No one has seen Mr. Smith since that day.
MR. SMITH IS A MYTH
Anyone that follows the current events would get my drift.
I have heard this argument. You cannot compare an immigrant who comes to America for a new life to a slave shackled in chains and forced into this land. The blacks were not immigrants. It is wrongful to put side by side their broken psyche and that of hopeful, aspiring pilgrims.
What if my whole ancestry has been plagued by darkness? What if our entire existence is defined by the struggle to find the source of light? What would that do to our overall psyche? What would be passed down from generation to generation? It did not take long for me to foresee intense jealousy and a warped view of humanity. “Life Isn’t Fair” would be the mantra. “You Owe Me” would be the refrain.
Five days without power, I was nearly worn out. Five hundred years without power? I would lead a movement too.
In Deuteronomy, Moses said, “Remember it’s the Lord your God who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” Jesus said in Matthew, “The poor will always be with you.” The Bible does not apologize for inequality; injustice is inherent in the fallen world. It’s hollow to fight for equality. As long as the human species rule this world, EQUALITY WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
Therefore, the work of educating the mind is ever so imperative. Anyone under the evil spell to live in a place without power lines can change their circumstances by first transforming their minds.
You are not a victim.
The bigger bully is the one with the victim mentality. They inflict guilt on those that have nothing to do with their suffering. They rob their joy and kick in the stomach of anyone that cannot empathize.
If hate is what consumes you, you will perish by hate. On the contrary, if love is what consumes you, you will overcome evil with good.
POSTSCRIPT
Three days after we got our power back, we had long forgotten the agony. Happiness was, sadly, short-lived.
I told my kids, don’t waste a crisis. Electricity can only be thoroughly enjoyed when we remember the pain of not having it. The minute we take things for granted, the minute we become complacent, discontent, and vulnerable to our circumstances.
I wrote this on Day 3 of the power outage in my journal,
“It’s a great time to go through this mini-trial of endurance. Don’t fret or become bewildered. Be creative, innovative, and resourceful. Now is day time, light is on our side. The challenge of the night is not here. The cool breeze has removed the humidity and warmness. We will be fine. I know I am bummed out that I don’t have much power left on this laptop. But praise the Lord, I am still typing!”
