At first, it was penetrating darkness and an eerie silence. Then came the whistling winds and the sound of rain pelting the windows, but still, darkness. As the sun began to rise, the wind began to slow and the rain subsided, temporarily.
Boy Scout training came in handy when it was light enough to figure out how to make brewed coffee without electricity. Not a fan of instant. As we sipped in silence, slowly the sounds of generators began to sputter in the neighborhood. We sat quietly, trying to soothe the pup, who didn’t fare well with loud, strange noises. Any time a generator popped and huffed and eventually died out, she barked viciously at the noise while cowering behind us,
When we each had consumed two and a half cups of coffee, it was time for our generator to join the neighborhood cacophony of post-Milton orchestral symphony. I awaited as the storm’s namesake, my husband the blowhard, methodically set up our savior. Now, between the grinding of our own generator, the hum of our refrigerator, the occasional clumsy drop of new ice cubes in the freezer, and the newfound confidence in our dog’s barking, the calm after the storm has left us and we must now begin the cleanup.
I am forever grateful to have had the opportunity to write this considering the deadly force of Milton, and I pray for his victims and their families as I pick yet another large branch of the camphor tree from the yard and not from the bedroom.