I was counting the hours till power was restored last week, but there was something charming about sitting in the sun and reading a book in natural light. Also, there was nothing more “productive” to do than read. It was beautiful outside, a powerful contrast from the night before, when 80 MPH winds tore across the yard.
The storm had left its mark. The Internet was knocked out, iPhone messaging was unreliable and email hadn’t worked since the last blast of torrential wind and rain. Alexa, my usual alarm clock and bearer of moment-to-moment weather reports, was quickly silent. I suddenly realized that critical as I’d become of AI data centers, I had become increasingly dependent on them.
Who did my mother used to call when she wondered how long dill pickles last in a power outage? Blueberry jam? Certainly not her sister Cora, who relied on astrology for most answers. Someone must have told her, “When in doubt, throw it out” because that jingle still played in my head.
So instead of throwing anything out, I left the fridge and freezer doors closed and moved a lightweight folding chair around the backyard in search that was sunny enough to read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest, “Unfinished Love Story” but not so sunny as to be sweltering hot.
I pored through the pages describing blood and billy clubs at the Democratic National Convention I attended in 1968 and imagine my worried parents back home, glued to the TV, while I had the adventure of my life.
Later, when power was restored and the cell phone was charged, I confessed to my daughter that I sure put her grandparents through a lot – only for her to remind me that it wasn’t really my job to put them at ease in the first place.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, apologetic at the lesson, and tried to wrap my head around three generations of parenting all in one day.
