Dark Days-Day One

NOTE FROM ROBIN: As many of your know, our power was knocked out by Storm Alfred two weeks ago. This is an accounting based partially on a 10 page handwritten journal entry I wrote on Halloween-2011 and the rest is from memory. I realize that I've been unable to write about what happened until now, partially because I've been in shock and needed time to readjust. The seven days we spent without power were some of the worst days of my life.

I'm also going to share some painful personal experiences. Make of it what you will. No, I don't need help. I'm OK. Writing helps me sort things out. I think that some times that out of pain can come greater understanding of one's self and can perhaps, help others. Also, we ALL have troubles and these are just mine. There are many worse off or better off...this is what I'm experiencing and part of my journey. I'm glad to finally be back.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. The nightmare begins as a magical dusting on the trees.

Writing with paper and pen…it’s too slow. I can’t get my thoughts to slow down enough. Editing this is going to take forever!

It’s Halloween, usually my favorite day of the year. It’s also Blitzen’s second birthday, too, yet celebrating is the last thing on my mind.

The past few days have been extremely difficult. On Saturday, October 29th Connecticut was hit—and I mean BEATEN TO DEATH—by Winter Storm Alfred; a freakishly early snowstorm. I’ve never seen it snow so hard and I lived in Minnesota for more than twelve years. There were such big clumps of snow that little Doodlebug thought the sky was raining cat toys. When I opened the door to the deck, he bolted outside and immediately began leaping and hopping after each falling mass. He seemed unaware that his toes must have been getting cold from melting the snow under his paws. Nothing bothered him. He just wanted to play.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. The DOOD makes a mad dash to play with the huge clumps of falling snow before he was brought back inside.

It was very surreal to see the leaves on the trees, many still green. Within a few hours there was easily six inches of snow on the ground. The trees were beginning to look like skeletons. The snow was so wet and sticky, it encased each branch, leaving it in a thick coating of white.

The weight of the snow grew heavier with each passing hour. By evening, tree limbs and tress began to topple over. Newtown, where I live, is heavily forested and has the most land area of any town in the state at 76 square miles. There were reports that many areas of town had lost power. I knew it wouldn’t be long before our time came, too.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. Panorama of my driveway at 7am the morning after the storm hit.

The lights began to flicker on and off for about an hour. It was around 8pm. We went about our usual tasks-feeding the cats, loading the dishwasher. I had just put away some freshly laundered clothes and had moved into the foster room to play with the kittens before their bedtime. Their room was chilly so I turned on a space heater. Within a moment of turning it on, I heard a loud “click”, the power went off, then on, then off, for good.

I sat there in the dark, swearing to myself. The kittens were climbing all over me, excited by the sudden blare of alarms going off. I grabbed a flashlight and made “the rounds,” turning off the screeching battery backups and heavy duty surge protectors we have on all the bigger devices in the house. I had to force quit applications on my computer to get it to shut down. Even with a battery backup and 15 minutes of battery power, it seemed to take forever to get everything shut down. I could feel my blood pressure rising as I started to wonder how long this power was going to be out. We called to report the outage, not realizing that most of the town and surrounding towns were out, too.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. View up the driveway-what driveway?

Then, silence. It was so quiet. That’s what always surprises me when the power goes out, that we live with so much noise. The hum of the refrigerator, the whirring of the furnace, the drone of the computer hard drives; strip that away and you suddenly realize you can hear your breath or tiny sounds coming from other parts of the house, usually made by the cats creeping around, or just nothing at all, maybe it’s the air pressure on your ear drums?

When the power goes out we LOSE EVERTYING. No lights. No heat. No water-so no water for flushing the toilet. Losing the power could become a nightmare if went on for more than a few hours. Usually the power’s restored within 12 hours or so, but it was getting cold inside the house and tensions between the inhabitants in the house were just as frosty.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. Looking back on the house. The oaks are close to hitting it and the driveway is impassible.

Something was up with Sam. He was stressed out about work and I was stressed out about the power going out. We didn’t say much to each other that night. With the power out, there was little to do so we went to bed and hoped that in the morning the lights would be back on and we could go back to ignoring each other.

I got up at 7am and looked out from under the covers. My heart sank when I realized the power was still out. The sun was rising and I could see between the slats in the window blinds that the sky was blue, clearly the storm was well over. I guess I’m a bit of a worrywort, especially when it comes to my house. I want to make sure it’s safe and we’re safe inside it. Even though I wanted to go back to sleep, I needed to know if our driveway had been plowed and if we could get out of the house at all.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. Panorama looking down the driveway from the street. You can barely see a corner of my house just left of the middle of the image.

I threw some clothes on over my pjs, put on my 30 year old snow boots, my gloves and hat and grabbed my camera. I thought about the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy’s opens the front door of her home, revealing to us the new world of Oz after her house had made a perilous journey through a tornado, leaving Kansas far behind. There’s that moment of awe as we, the viewer, take in this Technicolor world and Dorothy remarks to her dog, Toto that “We’re not in Kansas any more.”

This new world that greeted me wasn’t colorful at all. It was different shades of white; white everywhere I looked. It was confusing. Things were not where I thought they should be. My driveway stretches 250 feet up a steep incline that’s surrounded by trees. I had no idea where my driveway was.

The trees—the poor trees! They were bent over by the weight of the 15 inches of snow we got. It was such a wet snow that it covered every angle, every side of every object, obscuring what was underneath. This fairyland of white was really a deadly and dangerous place. I heard a loud “CRACK!”, followed by the crash of a large limb off a nearby oak tree. Mighty oaks, so strong and resilient could not stand tall under this burden.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. East down my road. It is so silent. It's like all the people are gone.

As my eyes adjusted and I could make better sense of what I was seeing, I realized that there were a number of large branches next to the house. A few feet over and we would have had them going through the roof. The driveway was impassible with trees bowed down to the ground, acting like gates. I knew I had to get the snow off those trees quickly, so they had a chance of recovering and not crashing across the driveway.

Without the power on, it would be very difficult to get into the garage, so I went back inside and grabbed the only thing I had that had a long pole-I grabbed a telescoping feather duster. It had an aluminum pole, but it was at least 8 feet long, so that’s what I used. I swung the pole against the branches. Each time I struck a limb, snow would wash over me, but I didn’t care. My fingers were so cold they were getting numb, but I had to keep going. I also had to pay attention to where I was standing. At any moment the tree I was working on could fall or the tree next to it could do the same. I was scared but determined. Eventually, I got enough snow off one tree that it began to lift away from the ground. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. With the sun rising and the temperatures supposed to be near the 50’s, the rest of the snow would melt fairly soon. Maybe I wasn’t too late and the trees would survive.

The yard was littered with branches-worse than after Hurricane Irene, which we just finished cleaning up after. There was a branch across the driveway, but I couldn’t move it very far. It was enormous and the weight of it dug into the snow. I’d try again later. I shuffled onward to the street to see if it had been plowed. There was little sign of anything, save for some lone tire tracks. Even the plows hadn’t come through.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. Our neighbor's car with broken limbs in the background.

I took photos, marveling at the beautiful scene. I delighted in the white-cloaked trees bathed in an amber glow from the sunrise, the blue in the sky deepening and becoming more vivid, but then something would look out of place. I realized a tree had fallen or more large limbs were scattered in every yard. I walked about a block in the silence, not even a bird was singing. My neighbor’s homes were okay. A few folks had parked outside, but no cars were damaged. Maybe the power would be on later today. Maybe it wasn’t so bad?

I went back inside to thaw out, but it wasn’t much warmer indoors. I had forgotten the heat was still off. I looked out onto the side yard and some of the bigger oaks had large limbs dangling from them. We weren’t in danger, but I figured it would be a long time before we could to get them cleaned up. Most likely every tree guy in town was going to be booked up for a long time to come.

I started to freak out. How were we going to get out of the house? What if we needed help? What if one of the cats got sick? It was damn cold. We needed to figure out how to warm the house up. We needed to make some plans if we were going to get through this…not having any idea of how long the power was going to be out. My phone had a little bit of battery life left. I looked up the CL&P web site. They provide our power. 99% of Newtown was out. Most of any nearby town was hit just as badly. Even if we could get out there was no place to go that was open and I had no idea if the roads were even passable.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. This scene was so magical. The reality of what may have happened throughout the rest of Newtown hadn't sunk in yet.

Sam, meanwhile, was asleep. I am far from perfect, but it mad me really mad that he was sleeping when we needed to be planning. Yes, I could have gone back to bed and waited until Sam got up and then we could both start planning and work on getting the driveway cleared, but I couldn’t hold back. It was already 9am. As I walked into the bedroom to tell Sam what I had seen, he got up and went to the bathroom. I heard a “flush” and it really set me off. When the power goes out, we CAN’T flush the toilets. We have to figure out who gets which bathroom, then use that toilet until it must be flushed with water we have reserved in one of two 5 gallon jugs. When that runs out, which would be fairly soon, we’re in trouble. He just wasted a lot of water and I was furious that he was so blasé about the whole thing. He forgot, he said. What is the big deal?

The tension between us only got worse. I shoveled the deck while he worked on getting more snow off the trees in the driveway. We were both in a bad mood. I realized Sam couldn’t get his coffee and that would just make things worse. At every turn, Sam did something else to piss me off. I asked myself if I had PMS. Nope. Not time. Great. It’s not bad enough the power is out for who knows how long, but we’re not getting along. I felt like a wild animal caught in a leg trap. I started to wonder if I was going to have to gnaw my leg off to get away-and with my car, there was NO way I was going to get out of the driveway any time soon. I was stuck-so was he until the trees could stand, unblocking the driveway.

In the electrified silence, we avoided each other for the rest of the day. I kept hoping the power would kick back on, but then I saw a post on Facebook that the governor said the power might be out for MORE THAN A WEEK! That’s when I really started to panic. My cell phone battery was running out. I had ¼ tank of gas. I could charge my phone if I ran my car engine, at least.

I just wanted a hot cup of tea and for this to be all over, but no. It had to get worse, first.

I don’t even remember what started it, but Sam and I had another 4 minute fight. He cut to the chase saying he was done with me and going to move out. That he was tired of my anger, meanwhile he was yelling, so go figure. He was so aggressive it scared me. I shot back at him saying I was just trying to protect the house and make things safe here, prepare for what to do until the power went back on, but he didn’t even believe me. He just thought I was a cruel bitch, though he didn’t call me that. Then he asked me if I wanted to live, inferring that I better shut up. In my life, I have never been so scared of anyone. He’s never threatened my life before and claims it wasn’t a threat. Not a threat? Really? Then what would you call that?

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. The branches of this oak tree touch the ground. It's as if the trees gave up trying to stand.

I told him to leave, to get out. Go to New York City. Stay with your Mother, but he wouldn’t go. I told him he could not sleep in the bedroom with me. There was no way I would feel safe near him again. He wouldn’t be moved. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to sleep with me either. It was awful, but I was so fed up I didn’t care any more. I think perhaps a lifetime of hurt and anguish just got to me in that moment. So we were fighting. So we hated each other. So what?

We turned our backs on each other and went to our separate corners, but with the power out what we really needed to do was to team up. Everything was going to be a lot harder now.

A few hours later, he knocked on my office door. He was going out to see if any restaurants were open and did I want anything. I couldn’t believe he went from threats and yelling to offering to get me food. I could have been nice and accepted his gesture, but I was so pissed I said no. I would rather go without than feel like I owed him any kindness. After he stomped off I went to the garage, now that it was open. If I couldn’t get out of the driveway because I don’t have a 4wd car, then I could charge my phone-my only lifeline to the world.

The sun had just set and it was getting quite dark. The only light came from a few orange indicators on the dashboard. After a few minutes I checked my phone battery. It would be a long while before it was charged. My hand brushed the knob to the car stereo and had inadvertently turned it on. I hadn’t heard much music for a long time, even before the power went out. It was like being reunited with a friend to hear a familiar song. Andy Partridge, formerly of XTC was taking my thoughts and fears away.

My break was short lived. There was no erasing this suffering. I looked into the side view mirror and saw a rolling white plume of warm exhaust mixing with the frosty air. The heater had kicked in and I was feeling warm, but could not really relax. I sat there with tears running down my cheeks, wondering how I got to this place, trapped in a relationship that had long ago soured. Was the rest of my life going to be just as miserable and full of anger and hate? I shocked myself thinking how easy it would be to hit Sam. The same guy I loved for so long. The same guy I used to write letters to when we weren’t together, telling him I missed him and loved him and couldn't wait to see him again. And now…he's the same guy who makes my blood boil, who bores me, who has checked out of our life together probably a very long time ago. I knew that all I had to do was pull the garage door down and it would be all over. I’d just go to sleep. All my foolish choices and angry words would swirl away-just like the innocent white exhaust.

©2011 Robin A.F. Olson. Looking out my living room window-realizing we were very lucky that although many branches and trees were damaged and dangerously close, none of them hit the house. These trees are bent over in half.

I sat there in the dark, thinking, maybe things are never going to get better? I took a wrong turn somewhere and can’t seem to right myself. Am I really so awful to live with or does he just focus on the bad? He wouldn’t even believe me when I told him the truth. He assumes I’m a liar, with no cause or no good reason. I don’t deserve being accused of that. There is nothing to be gained from lying.

It took 45 minutes to charge my phone. Somehow I just sat there feeling miserable, but didn’t do anything drastic. It wasn’t because of the cats or that I didn’t leave a note, but I hoped I would feel differently one day and that I tried to be strong and just feel what I feel, bad as it may be, then try to move on from there.

I think I’ve had my heart broken for one reason or another, so many times, that I’m numb. If Sam wants to leave, it will be very painful, but so be it. I’ve felt pain more than joy in my life. What is so different? I used to fear the day one of us would die, leaving the other alone. I couldn’t imagine my life without Sam and yet it was going to happen and it might be that we’d only be alone because we live separate lives.

I went back inside the house. It was the end of the first full day without power. It so cold-only 49 degrees. The cats were following me around, probably scared and worried about what had happened. I huddled by a candle and read a book huddled under the covers. I couldn't sleep. That night Sam didn’t come to bed. I was happy and sad at the same time. I’ve never worn so many clothes to bed, including my fingerless gloves and a hat. The cats were curled into tight circles on the comforter, as close to me as they could manage. It was 26 degrees outside. I could hear the coyotes yipping and shrieking. They were close by and I could tell there were many of them. They’d probably surrounded a poor deer who was about to become a meal. I felt so badly. I wanted to help the innocent creature but there was nothing I could do.

In that moment, I felt a lot like that deer.

...end of day One.