Electricity Out

It was around 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 16th, 2025. I was sitting in my warm kitchen about to eat dinner when the lights flashed a couple of times. The wind was beating the world around outside, blowing so hard I was sure if I walked outside I would be blown away. The noise was powerful. The wind was powerful, and I could feel some fear starting to nag at me.

The kitchen lights blinked on and off a few times and then to my dismay they blinked once more for the last time. Quietly, just like that, we lost our electrical power. We were at the mercy of nature and a higher power.

It was twilight. I had a program to attend in a couple of hours in a building where there was light, warmth, electricity and friendly people painting pictures of fruit baskets.

It was hard to believe there was light anywhere else. What a relief when I drove off my street to see lights beaming from cars and houses, as they should be.

I enjoyed paint night and had lots of fun. As I drove back to my street, it felt as if I was entering a different world, a dark zone. It wasn’t pitch black because there were lights on a street nearby, but it was a pretty creepy kind of dark.

I’m in the house now with the flashlights, the candles and my phone capacity slowly dwindling down. BGE said the power will come back on at 12:30 a.m., but it is way past that now. In the scheme of things, this is short-lived, temporary. Once the power comes back on, there will be gratitude all around the neighborhood.

In each and every house, the power will return, the refrigerators will start to whir and buzz, lights will fill the darkness, clocks will start to blink, calling out to be fixed, candles will be blown out, flashlights put aside. All the frustration may well be forgotten and forgiven.

We are so blessed. We have light, electricity and a wonderful company that comes out to fix things when they’re broken. These hard workers show up in the cold, the dark, the wind, the rain, the snow and the ice. They do their best to bring hope by restoring light, warmth and power.

And where does all that power ultimately come from? A higher power perhaps, a higher power that chose certain streets and certain people to lose their electricity on this very day at this very time.

Imagine that.

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Read more by Hinda Blum.