Making a Party of the Power Outage

As a disclaimer, I would like to extend heartfelt acknowledgment of people who truly suffered due to the power outage.

On the radio yesterday, I felt for people who were heading to hospitals because they did not have power for their oxygen machines. There were people who missed plane flights, got into accidents at intersections without working signals, and got stuck on the trolley—we saw one eerily frozen on the Spring Street overpass above I-8 on our drive home.

On this morning's news coverage, I shuddered when hearing about people who had to be trapped inside of elevators for five or six hours—talk about a claustrophobic nightmare! And, to top it off, what a long, crazy night this must have been for SDG&E workers, county and city officials, and safety responders.

Speaking on behalf of my family, though, the power outage was an oddly retreat-like experience. Once we were all safely back at home together, around 6:00 p.m., we began to prepare for what my son excitedly called, "pretend camping."

Knowing that we only had a little bit of sunlight left, we gathered our arsenal of supplies: a single working flashlight, a camping lantern, a booklight, and our kids' night light stuffed animal buddies.

There were a few tears from our 18-month-old daughter who did not understand why we would not open the refrigerator to get her favorite foods to eat. She didn't understand when my husband explained how we could not break the sacred seal that was containing as much coldness as possible.

But other than that, I was happy to find that my kids saw this experience to be like an impromptu party more than anything.

Not yet having heard about possible water issues, we started off by taking a family shower in near darkness before the sun set all of the way. Our home was already hot and stuffy from being locked up all day and so the shower cooled us down for a bit. Thankfully, there didn't end up being a widespread water shortage problem; otherwise, I would have felt really guilty!

As we started getting dressed in our pajamas, we looked out our bedroom window and caught glimpse of a beautiful sunset. It made us wonder whether the sunset was more beautiful than usual since there were no other lights either inside or outside to detract from it. Or, is it just the case that we normally do not take pause from our own distracted lives to notice it.

With the sun having set, my husband and I saw this night as an opportunity for us to all get some extra sleep. We figured we could take advantage of the darkness to get the kids and ourselves to bed at an earlier hour than is usual for us, and thus, we gathered the kids in our room for a special campout.

Of course, despite our best plans, our son and daughter decided on their own that this change in routine meant that there was cause for partying. The novelty of the darkness resulted in them running around with their lighted devices bouncing off all of the walls as they bumped into each other, giggling and squealing with delight.

At one point, our son exclaimed, "This is like an awesome party!" And, as I kept in contact with the outside world via Twitter—being careful to ration my cell phone's battery life—I noticed that he wasn't alone in feeling this way.

Rather than finding a lot of negative tweets, I discovered that people were not only making do with the situation, but in some ways, were pushed into making better.

Familes and friends took the opportunity to get together over barbeques, neighbors met up for the first time as people cooled off on their front porches, and, in the absence of television and computers, people engaged in real conversations.

In fact, the most complaining tweets I found started coming in the early hours of the morning, as power started turning on in homes. People were annoyed to be woken up with lights going on at one or two o'clock in the morning. It was as if the temporary darkness had been a reprieve that was suddenly snatched away. The quiet peace of our homes—and our lives—was shattered as power flooded back into our lives. 

People commented that with their TVs turned back on, there still isn't anything good on. This has to make us wonder, why then do we always have it on so much? Why don't we turn off our lights more often to enjoy the sunset that is right outside our windows? 

Perhaps this whole experience will inspire us to claim our personal power to turn off all of the conveniences and luxuries that regularly distract us from each other and from ourselves.

In the end, the party in the dark that took place in our home ended up being so much fun that we eventually had to break it up. Our kids were still up and about just as late as usual and so we resorted to separating them back into their own rooms to finally get them asleep.

As we tossed and turned in our beds due to the stuffy heat, the energy finally switched back on and we breathed sighs of relief as our box fans started humming and drawing the cool night air into our home. Yet, while I am glad that life is able to get back on track in some ways, I hope that we can use last night as a reminder to power down technology more often and perhaps do family camping on a regular basis, just because.