21 | February | 2021 | Through the Shattered Lens

Where to even begin with this week?

On Sunday night, I fell asleep thinking about how romantic it was to have snow on Valentine’s Day. I knew that even more snow was coming. I knew that the next week was going to be cold. I knew that the temperature was not projected to get over freezing until the upcoming Friday. I knew that it was going to be a difficult few days. Before I fell asleep, I even saw a report that there would be rolling blackouts. I knew this was all going to happen but still, nothing could prepare me for the experience of waking up at 3 in the morning on Monday, just to discover that the house had no power, the house had no heat, and it was 10 degrees outside! (When I fell asleep, I was wearing socks and not much else. So, at least my feet were protected from the cold. The rest of me, not so much.)

Around 8 in the morning, the power did come back on. And then, 90 minutes later it went back off and didn’t come back on for nearly 9 hours. The problem was not just that there were rolling blackouts but also that some idiot crashed his car into a substation. When the power did finally come back on, it was just in time for me to watch The Bachelor. As soon as the show ended, the power went back out.

It didn’t come back on for most of Tuesday, despite the fact that it was 3 degrees outside! And yet, as frustrating as it was, there was a strange beauty to the darkness. At 3 in the morning on Wednesday, I found myself staring out the bedroom window and just marveling at how the snow seemed to glow in the dark. When I read a book (Mickey Spillane’s One Lonely Night), I didn’t even have to grab a flashlight. I read by the glow of the snow. Call it snowlight.

On Wednesday, things started to improve. Though it was a less than ideal time to start Lent, Erin and I still observed Ash Wednesday as well as we could. It was on Wednesday that Erin pointed out that, even if not for the winter storm, Ash Wednesday would still have been strange because of the pandemic. That was when I first realized that this was the first week in a year in which I’d had something other than COVID to worry about. In fact, from the minute I woke up on Monday to find myself freezing and my teeth chattering, I pretty much forgot about COVID.

By Thursday, the power situation had stabilized. The temperature was up to the 20s. After spending three nights with freezing temperatures in an unheated house, 20 degrees sounded like paradise. With the power situation stabilized, I realized how lucky we were. We had power. We had heat. We had clean water. Most importantly, Jeff made sure that we turned on all of the faucets at night, so the water didn’t freeze and we didn’t end up with any pipes bursting and flooding the house. Even with my asthma, I had made it through two of the coldest nights of my life.

On Friday, the snow started to melt as the temperature zoomed up to 42. By the end of Saturday, we were in the 50s. By the end of today, we were in the 60s. All of the snow is gone and I’m still struggling to figure out how to put this previous week into words. It may have only been 7 days but it felt like 7 years. It almost feels like it was just a very long dream. Looking out at the neighborhood tonight, it’s hard to believe that it was just a few days ago that it was covered in snow and every house was dark.

I want to end on a positive note. There’s a stray cat who lives in this neighborhood. She’s a gray cat with dark stripes and white paws. She’s very friendly and she’s also very …. well, fat. Everyone feeds her. She goes from house to house, eating whatever’s on the porch and always stopping long enough to rub up against anyone who happens to be outside at the time. She’s the entire neighborhood’s cat and the collective love for her is the common bond that everyone who lives around here seems to share. She’s cute and lovable and even Doc refuses to hiss when he sees her walking through our backyard. When the snow started to fall on Sunday, I worried about whether or not she had found shelter. By the time the temperature plunged to 3 degrees, I feared the worst. As the days passed, I became more and more convinced that I would never see her again. On Thursday, however, I looked outside and I saw her proudly walking down the snow-covered sidewalk as if she didn’t have a care in the world. I’ve seen her everyday since. I’ve never been more thankful to see a stray.

Here’s what I watched, read, and listened to this week. Because of everything that went on, it’s a short list.