December's Last Gasp

From Sunday night, through yesterday and into this morning, we lived inside the wind. It thundered down the chimney, grabbed hold of the window frames and shook them, yanked tree limbs and flung them at our roof. It moaned while pounding the shutters at the side of the house. As the pines out back bent toward the house under the weight of the wind, I abandoned my seat under the picture window and moved toward comforting ignorance in the front room.


We were blessed that our power was out for only two hours Sunday night. I will not complain about having to finish half-cooked spaghetti carbonara on the gas grill in the middle of the blizzard. Such a minor inconvenience—and it left me with a story to tell when half our town went without electricity yesterday too, some folks into today.

While we listened to music by candlelight, the ocean flooded low lying areas.  Five miles away, two houses burned as firefighters in survival suits held hoses and waded through waist high water. “Reverse 911” calls invited us to the emergency shelter at an elementary school, but instead, we listened to the reassuring sound of the furnace kicking in as we settled in for another warm night’s sleep.

The sun joined the wind this morning. By mid-day, ice falling from tree limbs exploded like small bombs as it hit frosted windows, but the accumulation of snow is much less than expected. A huge pine lays uprooted in the yard across the street, but did no damage when it fell.

All day long I peeked out to our own, still-standing pines and took deep breaths. My husband though, can always find humor. The storm started Sunday, the day after Christmas. With hundreds of twigs embedded in the snow out back, he announced that we are now caretakers of a reindeer grave yard.