August 10th Tuesday, 7:00 pm: Day 1
“I might be a little late for pickup,” my mom said while driving to the JK Lee parking lot. “There is going to be rain today, so the road may be a little busy”, as she looked up to the dark cloudy sky.
“No Worries,” I said, grabbing a bottle of water from the car.
I love going for taekwondo.So I I try not to miss my classes. There weren’t many people in the class but it looked like a normal day. The class started with initial stretching, then line drills, and then forms. We did Whatever the teacher decided . We did line drills and my favorite part was where we got into lines and did exercises from a wall to the other wall. We did a few rounds and it started raining heavily with thunderstorms. My instructor was giving us a talk about jump back kicks when the light started blinking. It went out for a couple of seconds and then came back. One minute later the power went completely off. “No Worries,” my teacher said, grabbing his phone for light. We did some sort of stretch then ended with individual forms. It was hard to see in the dark and parents were calling the Jk Lee office to pick up their kids.
My dad called the office and a lady from the front desk told me that dad would come soon. We all waited for rides as I saw winds breaking the tree branches and trees falling down on the road. It rained heavily with thunder and lightning.
“Maybe the power went out at home,” I thought to myself. Since we live pretty close to Jk Lee, our house might have no power. My dad picked me up and as we drove home, we saw many of our neighborhood trees on the main road or on the sidewalks.
“Do we have power at home”? I asked my dad on the way home.
“Nope, it went out already, thank god we had cooked dinner before the power went out,” My dad said as we entered the driveway.
“Great!, I sighed. No power meant no electricity, no air conditioning, no WiFi, no devices, no TV, and no fun. When we entered home, my mom had a portable lamp with a charger port in there to charge devices. We had a candlelight dinner as we sat in the sunroom.
My mom started the conversation by saying,“This happened almost every day back in Nepal”. “Nothing too serious”, she added.
We all fell asleep in the sunroom, as it was a little cooler than the bedroom upstairs. It felt like we were camping.
August 11th Wednesday: Day 2
My mom had work but Dad was home with us. She was upset to see her sunflowers ruined by the storm. As she left for work after struggling with the garage door,I decided to make myself some breakfast, I checked the fridge, it wasn’t working and all the food smelled bad, the stove and microwave weren’t working either. Luckily my dad got us pastries from Starbucks. I decided to turn on the tv, no luck. I didn’t know what to do at home. My mom suggested that I could read a recently borrowed book called Shouting at the Rain by Lynda Mullally Hunt. I read some of it. It sounded really interesting but then I decided to clean up my room because it was a big mess. We got lunch from my favorite restaurant Murfs. We got a sandwich, fries, and some drinks. Most of the fast-food places were closed because they had no electricity. I ate my lunch sadly and continued reading. I was hopeful that the light would come back on but it didn’t. There was no drinking water and the house was a mess as the ice in the fridge was melting on the wooden kitchen floor. We only had bottled water. It was hot outside and inside the house. When my mom came home, she had a virtual meeting where she was giving a talk, but since there was no wifi, she had to go back to work and my dad had to have his meeting in his car because that was the only way he could get wifi. After my mom’s s meeting, we went to Walgreens to get supplies like water, coke, chips, and stuff . My dad ordered Indian food. It was really dark that we didn’t enjoy what we ate! Since it was really hot and the AC wasn’t working, we slept in the basement because it was cool there and not too hot. We put mattresses on the floor but I wanted to sleep on the couch. We had a portable device to charge our phones. My dad had to buy large D batteries because our lamp ran out of charge as we were using it for more than 24 hours. Day 2 without power was uncomfortable but adventurous. I kept reading my book Shouting at the rain as I had nothing else to do.
Thursday august 12th: Day 3
I was hopeful the power would turn on today, but no luck. We would have guests over today, but we moved them to Alisha Aunty’s place since we have no power. We tried contacting We-energies but they were still working. I had nothing to do again so I continued reading Shouting at the Rain. Then I realized something: after the storm, there was no power, which meant no fun or anything, which is like me shouting at the thunderstorm. The book was interesting and I ended up finishing the book within 3 days. We went outside often to get fresh air and to get us out of stress.we couldn’t go to the library because it was crowded by people who didn’t have power at home. In the evening I went to Kumon to do my work and then went to Alisha Auntys house for dinner. We played with her puppy, ate dinner and came home. We- Energies said that the power may be back in our house at night, but there was no luck. I was hopeless. I fell asleep as I was very tired. Shailu uncle and Dad slept in the sunroom.
Friday August 13th:
I got up in the morning but I was completely hopeless. As I turned on the light, IT WORKED! I was ecstatic. My mom said it was Naag Panchami Puja day. So we did rituals and I got to help my dad put up a picture of Naag devta with lord Krishna on the front door. It was a good learning experience. Naag means serpent king so we celebrate this day to pray to the Naag Devta (serpent god) for good luck and protection from evil.
We emptied the fridge, cleaned the house, set up our tv’s desktop computers, and caught up on stuff. Shailu uncle left in the morning to pick up his parents from Chicago airport. We were just thankful to get our power back. For the first time, I realized how important electricity is for our life.
I will end this blog with a promise to share my book review of Shouting At the Rain next week!