August 31, 2011

Standing Still

Chebeague Island, Maine


The tail end of hurricane Irene blew through the Boston area on Sunday. I love summer storms. The smell of damp air, the quick reverse in summertime's splendor. The coziness.

There's something so delicious about summer rain. I think I know what it is actually. When it's cold out and it rains, everyone seems to retreat into instant hibernation, but when it's warm, sun kissed summers simply get kissed again by the rain.


Photo by Ove Topfer
Anyway,

at noon on Sunday we suddenly lost power. "Uh-oh," I thought. Usually I like it when this happens. Not this time. Just a temporary thing, I hoped. I lit some candles.  I was feeling a little jiggy- what if it doesn't come back on for a long time? I have so much to do!

I started by at least cleaning up the breakfast dishes. Couldn't run the dishwasher...couldn't do laundry...with my cell phone uncharged, I couldn't even return any calls. No music. Nothing in the house was working except the Ipad, which I find kind of annoying.

I couldn't even go for a run.

Trapped, I thought.

And the electricity didn't come back on for nearly 5 hours.

Luckily, the kids pulled out some games. Games are great equalizers with teenagers. It took me a long time to figure this out unfortunately. Games are a great connector between all the generations actually.

For starters, the four of us played Apples to Apples. As usual, I find my game mate's goof ballish-ness and smarts very entertaining...

Then we went on to my favorite game: Bananagrams. Oh man do I love this game. If you don’t know it- it's similar to scrabble but without the board- and you create your own little crossword puzzle, unconnected to anyone else. Kind of like having your own little individual pie. And then you race against everyone else to use up all the letters. It's a fabulous game I tell you. I could seriously play it every day.

And the cute little yellow banana pouch, with the zipper, that the letters come in?

The beauty of it is that you can take it with you absolutely anywhere.


Photo by Fran Priestly

So in the end

the engine was cut and I was forced to stand still.

Sometimes the saying “everything happens for a reason” bugs me.

But the older I get

the more I think

that oftentimes

it is absolutely true.