Blackout!

I looked out over the valley last night and found a sea of darkness. The last of days of summer had been pounding us with heat and humidity and this evening was no exception. Though the night had brought cooler weather, it remained still and breezeless. 


I am shaken from my zoned out state by the stifled giggles of children running past me. It is 8:45 p.m. on a school night and close to twenty neighborhood children are playing Cops and Robbers on our street. In the background, I hear chatter and laughter from the adults, with 90's pop music and the Green Bay Packers vs. New Orleans Saints game from someone's car radio.


It is a blackout, an event that I spent many years enduring as a child in the Philippines, but as a resident of South Orange County, CA, this event is unheard of.


The power went out at about 3:30 p.m., when I was still at work. With most of my duties performed on a computer, it brought our entire office to a standstill. Upon checking my cell phone, I noticed that it read, "No Service". The cell relay sites must have gone down too, I was told. I was able to leave a few minutes earlier to stop by and drop off mail at the post office. No luck -- by the time I had arrived there at 4:30, the doors were shut and locked. 


I headed to the supermarket with the intention of purchasing some ice to keep in our ice chest and in the freezer to save my precious steaks and ice cream {a balanced diet, I know}, holding my breath that it may not even be open. Surprisingly, they were open for business, and even more shockingly, they were still able to run on minimal power and accept debit and credit cards. Though I had cash on me, I could hear my husband's voice in my head {"Keep the cash. Use the debit card, since you can. We may need the cash later and not be able to get some"}. Sweet, I thought. It wasn't long until I was greeted by disappointment when I found an almost empty ice case. The lady in front of me had grabbed the last block of ice. Not letting that get in the way of my goal, I grabbed five large bags of the only other alternative: flavored ice. I figured it would do the job of saving my steaks, and if anything, they'd make for great cocktails that I counted on having later on that evening. No matter what, I wanted to get home, and quick, as I was sure that everyone was going to treat this situation as a disastrous catastrophe, and that equated to ridiculous traffic. 


I got home and ensured that my movements were slow -- with the heat, humidity, and no electricity to run our air conditioning, I was not about to tire myself out. It wasn't long until our neighbors started gathering on my driveway... and suddenly people were bringing lawn chairs, blankets to sit on our front lawn, candles, and flashlights. 

As dark became more imminent, children huddled in small and large groups, plotting the rules of whatever game they happened to be playing at the moment. 

 At about 9:00 p.m., screams of jubilation resounded through our cul-de-sac, as phone calls to parents came in from the local school district's automated message service, announcing that school had been cancelled the next day.

Women gathered in groups on patios, sharing stories and gossip.

Several parents brought out whatever popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, and other cold items from their freezers and handed them out to the eager neighborhood children {and even some other adults!}. At one point, someone even brought out a fire pit and put it in the street directly in front of our driveway.

In any other given time or place, it may have been easy to complain, squirm in discomfort, or find blame in whoever or whatever it may have been that caused us all to come out of the comfort of our homes, but luckily, such was not the case on the night of the big West Coast Power Outage. It seemed to me that everyone was actually thankful for it.


For a few hours, summer seemed to have found its way back to our street. Illuminated only by flashlights, candles, and glowsticks, everyone was able to have an encore of a hurrah for summer.