I haven’t posted for a week. We had just moved into a condominium in the West Palm Beach area and two days later were putting up our storm shutters as Wilma approached from the Gulf Coast. By Monday morning a powerful hurricane had knocked out our power leaving down trees and minor structural damage to our community. The only media was AM and FM radio, mostly devoted to helpful hosts passing along vital information about where to find ice and gas, the extent of damage to south Floridas infrastructure, and the progress of power restoration.
Our new neighbors gladly let us use their generators to keep our refrigerator cold, not accepting any cash for using their gasoline. One gave us the use of their small battery-operated black and white TV but it was mostly regular programming and not what we needed to cope with the aftermath–and it used far more battery power than radio. I needed to know about water purity more than I needed to watch the week’s episode of Lost (and besides I can download it from iTunes when it becomes available.)
In the evening, the three of us, my wife, and 11-year old son would wind up on our bed– the whole moving/hurricane business was exhausting. My son would complain about not having the power to play his video games. When our neighbor offered us the use of his generator to keep our refrigerator cold, Benjamin asked, “Will it run a DVD player?” We missed our media of course but since it couldn’t be helped, we managed better than he did.
One night, on the bed, by the light of our camp lantern, I told Ben the story of how I met his mother, and how we saw the clear hand of Providence in it. I’d never thought to mention it before, but in the dark night, with only the sounds of sirens and generators in the distance, it seemed like a good idea to pass along a piece of our family’s story he might find useful later on.
The next night I did something I rarely do–laid in bed and read a book–no television or movies to compete with reading this time. The book by the way is Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, a Phillip Marlowe mystery classic I had bought and lost track of until the move uncovered it. It’s incredibly entertaining.
By Friday we decided that the predictions of no power restoration until sometime in November required us to buy a generator of our own. We found one at Home Depot and someone graciously offered us a can of gas that we picked up that afternoon. We went home after picking up a pizza, planning to rev up the generator for the first time after supper. Sure enough, right before we sat down to eat, the lights came on. Power restored.
Now that “normal” life has resumed, we’re naturally grateful for safely cold food and clean water, and e-mail, which I’m still catching up with. And blogging–but it was a good reminder that I have neighbors who live next door, and friends in town willing to help with immediate basic needs, and informative folks on the radio who had fewer chances to shower than I did but were there to pass along needed updates. Keeping up with electronic media takes time–from family, neighbors and friends in the community. In our new home I want to experience more of that time with unmediated relationships. But we’ll probably talk alot about movies and television.
