We Need to Clean the Refrigerator

        We’ve been saying that to each other for a while, but we never seemed to find the right time. Last week was the right time.

 

About four o’clock Tuesday afternoon, I was on the phone with my mom, and the power went out. I talked to her for a minute, maybe about how we were supposed to have a storm that afternoon, but soon I realized she wasn’t answering. My phone had cut off.

 

At least five tornadoes occurred in the Cleveland and surrounding counties that afternoon, which is unusual for this area. More than three hundred thousand people were without power. Ours didn’t come back on for 75 hours.

 

God was so much better to me than I deserved that afternoon. Before the power went out, I had a weather alert on my phone, saying we were in a tornado warning and everyone should move to a basement or other safe area. I checked the weather forecast, and it said we had a thunderstorm warning.

 

I couldn’t hear anything going on outside, so I wondered if I’d misunderstood when it said a tornado warning. I can’t hear a lot from outside, but I can usually hear strong wind or thunder. Murray said there was very little tree damage he could see on our street and no damage at our house. There was much property damage throughout the community, including on nearby streets, but praise God, no reported injuries.

 

I was so not careful. I just sat in my armchair, by a window, all afternoon, not aware of how serious it was. God was so good to me.

 

The running joke around our house for the next three days was, “Could somebody turn the fan on? It’s so hot in here.”

 

On Wednesday, I felt really depressed, like I couldn’t do anything. I had braille I could read, and knitting to do, but I didn’t feel like doing much. I confess, that afternoon, I went to bed for the entire afternoon.

 

Thursday morning was when we normally have garbage pick-up, so that morning, we threw away more than thirty pounds of meat. And that was just the beginning. We stock up when we see a great sale. That’s not quite what we had in mind when we talked about cleaning the refrigerators.

 

Thursday morning also, when we plugged my phone in on the charger we had from the car, it started talking, saying the time. I said, “Is that my phone? My phone is talking!” I was so delighted.

 

By noon that day, I could receive and send texts, and after six that evening our son Caleb called me, and I had a conversation on the phone for the first time in two days. I felt like my world had changed.

 

That day, I felt much better and read over both the braille manuscripts I have to grade. I figured I’d be able to go through them much faster once the power was back on and I could work on the reports.

 

We thank God for how much better things were for us. Some people without power needed to be on oxygen; others had difficulty getting food. Murray and Sarah were able to shop for us and Murray could charge phones and other devices for us when he went to work. They did not lose power at his office, about seven miles west of us.

 

We got really tired of fast food by Wednesday night. I’m not sure we did much better after Murray and Sarah had gone shopping. One meal was chips and salsa. On Friday evening when the power came back on, we were having doughnuts and Cheez Its. Murray suddenly said in a quiet, amazed voice, “Kathy, the power’s on.” “It is not,” I said, but then the fan was on, and I realized I’d just heard the microwave ding.

 

We called my mom and Murray’s aunt Melody right away to tell them we had power, but I said to them, “We can’t talk long. We need to go and use some electricity.”