"Power Outage feeling like the Eighteenth Century. If only I hadn't forgotten my panniers... scandalous!" Yes, I think I'm funny. That was my photo and caption on Instagram yesterday. So, the power went out yesterday afternoon, and now we'll explore what that's like for the Roberts family here in the deep south at the oncoming of summer. I had been out running an errand and kept lowering my sunglasses because it seemed like rain clouds. I kept checking while I was driving. The clouds didn't seem that dark, but it's like I could feel it on the wind. Once I arrived back in the driveway the wind was kicking up. I was happy and a smile slid across my face. There were no cawing crows racing back home to their nests in the treetops, which is a tell tale sign of an impending storm, but still I could feel it. I came inside and got to work helping dad with his computer problem. "Is it going to rain, do you know?" I asked. "When...? Today...?" he answered, but was dubious that it would rain. Five minutes later there was this drumming, like miniature soldiers marching off to war. I listened for half a moment and then jumped up yelling, "It's raining!!!" Dad looked at me like I was crazy, but I was already running for the front door and threw it open wide and watched as torrents of rain poured down from the sky. I didn't dance a jig, but my heart certainly did. I was absolutely elated! And it kept raining. Lots and lots of rain; heavy and then light and heavy again. It was late afternoon, but the skies were grey. Then a transformer down the street shut off, as did my computer. Then it restarted itself, the transformer, I mean. All was well. You don't want to be without power in the warm months, because heat and mugginess as well as flies and mosquitoes and stinging insects, so you can't open the windows. We should have screens, but we don't. Without breeze, it's uneventful anyway. I couldn't keep my mind on my work here on the computer, because I wanted to drift off to my comfy bed and read, which is exactly what I did. I was completely absorbed in my book until I heard the unmistakable sound of the transformer shutting off. It restarted and the electricity came right back on. Then it was off again, and the transformer tried restarting three times and then all was quiet. I rooted around in my side table drawer for my flashlight and comforted the cats. There was no helping The Baby. The first time the transformer had shut down, an hour or two before, he'd hidden himself underneath my bed. Though the sun blazed orange in the west, it was slowing sinking and would be dark soon. My bedroom on the north side only has the one window by my bed, so it was like twilight in there. I came to the office, this room, to read as it faces the west, and is so much brighter in here. There wasn't anything to do but wait. Except my dad came upstairs shortly after that with his mobile and wanted me to call in the power outage. I'm sure the power company already knew, but what could it hurt? I had to keep calling and keep going downstairs to the library, because the first was the Call Before You Dig number for the power company, and secondly when I did get the correct phone number to report an outage, they wanted my account number. The light was failing fast by this time and it was growing ever more stuffy in this room. I'm sure the activity of running up and down the stairs in a closed and quiet house did no good for keeping me cool. By the time I couldn't see anymore, the electronic voice on the phone said they knew about the outage and it should be repaired by 9:45. Two hours and forty-five minutes from then. So, I headed downstairs and promptly lit some candles and opened the screened windows on the sundeck. If there was any air cool enough to be had, it would be in this room. I could have finished reading my book by all of the candles I had lit, but I decided that playing Gin Rummy might make the time pass more quickly. Things were fine enough; slightly sticky, but fine. I'm dealing out cards and setting my mind towards hand after hand of this game when dad's boy mode kicks in and he just has to play with his toys. Those toys are kerosene lamps. He has quite a collection of them and every time the power goes out they're the first things to surface. So, he's dusting them off and adjusting the wicks and lightening them all over the house. I don't like kerosene lamps. Sometimes the shapes of them are pretty. Green glass or brass bases in sturdy shapes, but they smell terrible and chemically, because they are just that. Plus, we have enough candlesticks (in silver even) and candles to appease a king. It's not like we're lacking on unelectric lighting here. They're all within easy reach. Plus, they don't smell. We have so many candle sticks that several were still on the sundeck with their candles half melted from the last time the power went out last year. There was no need to move them because they weren'y needed for any ambient dining as we had others that could be used. There was no need to bust those lamps out, except for the fact that he wanted to play with his toys. Which I said as much and said it was fine, he should just admit that that was the purpose. He glared at me like a five year old whose mother had told him he couldn't have his toys any longer. Plus he'd set them in places where no one was, and left to do, I don't know, other boy things. Find more kerosene lamps, check on his axes and saws, walk outside to peer down the street and check on the progress? The first and last items were true. He did arrive with more lamps and stated that the trucks had arrived and the transformer had tried resetting itself again. He's funny. So, mom and I are in the middle of a short card game and suddenly she said, "Your brother was a lineman you know." Of course I would know. It's not that he'd had the job long before his untimely death, but I was aware. "It's a dangerous job..." and that was that. Rusty had entered the day and was easily gone again. My mother resumed her play like nothing had happened. Except that wasn't all. It made me think about how he'd worked in loss prevention right before that and said it was terrible and never to pursue that. Then, he'd been a lineman. His job had ended up firing him when he didn't show up for three weeks (ya know, because he was dead - which is also how long it took anyone to find him, but I won't go into that, because obvious sad reasons), and upon hearing that he'd died they sent this really huge and expensive purple funeral wreath to the funeral, which a friend of mine took a flower from that same wreath as a momento and for some reason I didn't like that at the time. Which briefly made me wonder why it had upset me so. I didn't want the flowers. They'd be laid on Rusty's grave and he could have cared less, so why was I mad that she took one, and in my view that day it was closer to stole. She'd stolen something. But really who gives a fuck? It's not her fault he died, she hadn't "stolen" him from us. They were just flowers. Perhaps it's just a part of grief? But now that leads me to happier memories during a terrible time. So, the cops when informing my aunt (she's the birth mother, it's complicated, but he was my brother) of my brothers death, which had happened about three weeks prior, that sometime during those weeks, people broke in and burglarized his apartment. This seems like adding insult to injury, but it made The Sister and I laugh. I'd already thought what my brother would look like after that time when he was found, which was not a pretty state, but it's hard not to think like that when you know what happens to bodies. He'd fallen into a diabetic coma and died on the couch, in a seated position. My brother loved horror and I can only imagine the looks on those guys faces stumbling upon his body like that while trying to rob him. It would have made my brother laugh. Or at the funeral, my brothers ashes were in a metal urn on a small clothed table with a collage of pictures propped up on an easel behind it. The table had the hole dug right before it. So, every time anyone went up to view the photo's they ended up stepping into the hole that would be his final resting place. It made The Sister and I laugh because it's exactly the kind of thing that would have made Rusty roll with laughter; sending his great guffaw out in waves to the Universe. Then some small boys, whose dad's had been Rusty's close friends, were wondering what was in the urn. They removed the lid and were asking curious questions amongst themselves and trying to stick their hands into my brothers ashes, and then their parents quickly trying to get them out of it. That made us laugh too, because again Rusty would have found great humor in it. I can't help but recall those things because of re-writing my thoughts from last night. It's comforting though. Imagine finding out that your very loved and very dear brother had died and rotted for three weeks? How does one get over that type of guilt and grief? 'No one cared enough to check on him'... turns into 'we didn't care enough to call him'. Which isn't true, of course we cared about him, but we didn't talk to him on the phone that much, so he wasn't due another call from us, or us from him, for another few weeks or a month. But, when he sat there and rotted, then suddenly all you can see is how guilty and shamed you are. You should have known, you should have called, alerted everyone. But that, of course, is ridiculous, as we didn't realize anything was amiss. But, it's still hard to shake those feelings. So, the ghoulishly amusing parts are actually helpful, knowing that he would also find them absolutely hilarious. But back to last night. My mother never mentions his work being a lineman during other power outages. Ever. But, in the span of five days Rusty is, I don't know, speaking through people? Folding himself into the fabric of the every day, even just for a moment. And again I'm left wondering why.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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