How It All Went Down - Part II

Part 1 is here.

After the sponge bath, my husband and I decided we may as well go to bed. We were both worn out.

I woke about 12:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve and listened to the wind howling, again. We did not have wind like this when I was a child. But now, it's a pattern - a front comes in, the wind follows. And not just breezes, but big gulping chunks of wind that take down trees and rip up buildings.

My husband had estimated the generator would run until about 4 a.m., but I felt like he'd miscalculated, so at 1 a.m. I shook him awake and suggested we go gas the thing up.

I put on my jeans, a pair of socks, my sneakers, a light coat, and then my heavy coat. I pulled my hands inside of my coat and put a stocking hat on my head. I was to be the flashlight holder.

He put on a pair of insulated coveralls, sneakers, and a coat. He put on a stocking hat and gloves as well, and outside in the dark we went.

The wind was frigid, and the air was thick with cold. I held the flashlight so he could see to turn off the generator and then open the gas cap. Unfortunately, I could not keep my hands inside my coat and hold the flashlight, and the ends of my fingers began to freeze from exposure. I also felt it on my cheeks. It took a long time for 5 gallons of gas to empty out of that can.

By the time we were done and I could go back inside, my fingers were painful from cold. My fingers were numb and red. Warming them back up took lots of rubbing to bring the feeling back. We undressed, and then we both shivered against one another when we returned to bed. He held my hands to try to warm them, but his weren't much better even though he'd had on gloves.

Finally, we slept. We woke at 6:15 a.m., our usual normal time, and got up.

The first order of business, after breakfast, was for him to go get more gasoline. The generator was eating up about a gallon an hour, and we only had three 5-gallon cans. While my husband went after the gasoline, I put a towel down by the kitchen sink, took off my clothes, and stood there naked while I waited on a bowl of water to heat in the microwave. Then I took a sponge bath right there in the kitchen. I ended up dumping water over my head with a cup, but I didn't wash my hair.

I dried off and dressed. The hair dryer wasn't working in the bathroom - apparently it was on a circuit breaker he hadn't turned on - so I brought it in the kitchen. I hoped that having my hair dried and brushed might make me look a little better, which in turn might make me feel better. I have to say, by this time I was mighty low. It was obvious that Christmas Eve was not going to be the special day I had been anticipating.

I did my chores again, making the bed and sweeping the floors with a broom. There was little else I could do. I read the paper, checked the power company website, and looked at a few magazines. I was too anxious to concentrate on a book.

My friend T. let me know they'd also lost power, but they had invested in a whole-house generator, so they were doing fine.

My husband returned and he brought with him a pair of gloves that he'd picked up at the local farmer's co-op. He didn't want my hands to freeze again.

My father and brother called to check on us. My husband asked my brother if he had extra gas cans. When he brought them over, he came into the garage, where I waited dressed in a coat, robe, jeans, and whatever else I could find because the house was cold. He hugged me and I cried because we were going to have to miss Christmas Eve.

"We'll do it another time," he said. "It's not your fault. At least I'm seeing you on Christmas Eve."

His house makes me sneeze and have asthma attacks. It is full of taxidermy animals and he and his girlfriend have a dog. This is why we did not go over there to stay or to have Christmas. My allergies ruin everything.

By 11:45 a.m., the house was at 60 degrees. The humidity was at 25%, which added to the chill. I kept adding clothes, including a second pair of socks, to my outfit.

We ate sandwiches for lunch. My husband was in and out trying to get the generator to work up at his mother's, but it wouldn't run the heat (it was supposed to). She was going to have to stay at his sister's until the power came back on. (In the meantime, we didn't even think about the stuff in her freezer; I could have carried it outside and it would have stayed frozen, but neither of us thought to do it. I think we were just too weary to think of everything.)

My husband continued to run back and forth between his mother's house, working on her generator, and ensuring the cattle waterers were not frozen. He was working with his cousin and his nephew, because my mother-in-law's house is large, and it would have helped if they could have gotten the heat running so that not everyone was tripping over one another at my sister-in-law's.

I tried to keep my spirits up, but they were quite low. 

I noticed, though, that a few times when I turned on the hot water to wash my hands, something I was doing out of habit, that the water was warm. Weird. It should have been cold by then.

Finally, darkness fell. My husband came in and we had another meal of cold chicken and a vegetable heated in the microwave. I mentioned the hot water to him.

"Try it and see if you have hot water," he suggested.

I turned on the faucet, and after a few seconds, there was warm water! Not hot, but hot enough. I was excited. "I thought the generator wouldn't run the hot water heater!" I exclaimed.

"It won't."

My husband took a flashlight and his glasses and went out to the circuit breakers and hot water heater. All of that stuff is in a small room off the garage. The circuit breaker to the water heater was off. He took a voltage meter and for unknown reasons, there was less than 1 amp of electricity running to each of the hot water heater elements.

"That's not enough to heat the water," he said. "And I don't know where it is coming from."

I decided to see if there was enough warm water to wash the dishes. I filled the sink, and we still had warmish-hot water, so I washed the dishes that had piled up in the dishwasher.

We let it sit for another hour. "Do you want to risk a shower?" my husband said. "You haven't washed your hair since Thursday."

I agreed to give it a try, knowing that if the hot water didn't hold up, I would be drenched in freezing water. But the warm water stayed warm. My husband stood at the shower faucet, turning it off and on, and I was able to wash my hair.

It felt so good, and the shower lifted my heart a bit.

There was enough warm water for my husband to shower, as well.

"I don't know how this is happening," my husband said as he dried off.

"It's a Christmas miracle," I replied, sure that somebody somewhere knew that if I didn't have some boost to my spirits, I would fall mercilessly down to the bottom of that deep well of depression that I constantly circle around anyway.

After that, we both felt refreshed. We went to bed and set an alarm for 2:30 a.m.  My husband told me he could use the car lights to see to put gas in the generator, so while I got up with him and made sure he came back inside without any problems, I didn't have to go out in the extreme cold.

"Merry Christmas," I said to him as we crawled back to bed.

For it was Christmas Day.

To Be Continued