Last night there was a thunderstorm. It started off as the kind that I really love; the ones where the wind blows just a little, and the rain falls just a little, and it’s mostly the low roll of thunder, that kind of thunderstorm. But then it became the kind of thunderstorm that leads to tornado watches, and power going out, and trees in the back yard falling, and me and my roommate sitting on the couch downstairs in the dark talking about boys.
It’s kind of funny. I mean, giant limbs were falling on the back porch, we could hear trees falling in the yard and across the street, but at some point, we just sat, each on our own end, our legs stretched out…talking in the dark as if nothing was happening outside. That’s when it became the kind of storm I like again.
It was nice. I don’t normally prefer sitting on couches in the dark, especially when out of the windows it looks like God is using some sort of super flashlight to light up the backyard…but I guess when I forgot about studying for my vitamins and minerals exam, and working on lab reports, and I could just sit, and talk, and forget…then I welcomed the dark, and the scary lightening, and the “bad” sort of thunderstorm. The only regret I had was that I couldn’t make a cup of tea. I really like hot tea these days, this is mostly because I recently figured out how I like my tea…and tea is only good when you know how you like it. This can be said for many things in life.
At twelve something, my roommate wanted to sleep, so she lied down, and I studied a bit more for my exam on Friday, by flashlight. At one something, I decided I’d go upstairs, so I woke her up and we went to our own dark rooms.
I’m the person who has tons of candles, but I don’t use them often because I want to save them. I love lighting them, I just hate how quickly they melt away, and I don’t really want to buy more, I just want the ones I already have, so though I prefer them over lamps, I don’t use them as often as I’d like to. Anyway, the best thing about the power going out is that I end up lighting my candles: the really tall ones, the short fat ones, the vanilla scented ones, and the purple ones, and the one that smell like hazelnut coffee.
I can’t sleep when the power goes out. I guess because I know that if I wake up and want to turn on a light, I won’t be able to, so I just stay up until the lights come back on just so that I can turn them off and go to bed (I know this is ridiculous). So my room had that warm glow that only exists when you light candles, and I remembered the love letters under my bed from the 1800’s in a shoebox, and I read a few. At two something, I wrote four pages in my journal about all of the things I forget to write about from day to day. And then I decided I’d write a letter. I’ve always wanted to write a letter, I just never really ever had a reason to write a letter…but with reason or not, I decided I’d write one; between the candle light, and the thunder outside, and the shoebox of letters, and the black ink of my pen, I just had to write a letter.
I say all of this to say, I wish there were more nights when the power would go out. In my marriage and family class, we learned that there is no such thing as “the golden years,” but I think there was. I’m not saying economically they were better, or people were better, but I think there was a time where materialistic things weren’t so important, when things were simple, when people wrote each other letters by candle light, and when people traded TV, and facebook, and useless things for novels, and poetry, and pianos, and long walks outside. They sat in large chairs, or small chairs, or on floors by candlelight or fire places and talked in the dark, and they had moments of forgetfulness like I had last night. I could trade convenience for that.
I’m sure I’m being quixotic about this, but it just seems they had more time to really enjoy life, to enjoy breathing, and exhaling, and just being in a moment. You know? That had real conversations constantly, and had deep thoughts because their thoughts weren’t being snuffed out by crappy tv shows and music.
I remember hearing in one my classes growing up, I’m not sure which one, but I heard that Abraham Lincoln used to just sit in a sitting room and think. He’d just sit and think. For hours. And I remember wondering how anyone could just sit quiet like that and think for so long; but I catch myself doing the same thing sometimes. In class, I sometimes catch myself daydreaming, thinking about the most random things ever, and in the morning, I’ll hit the snooze button five times or more so that I can just lay there and think, and at night, I think a little more. What do I think about? Who knows? But it’s nice to have time to just think to myself, and not having to think about what a teacher is saying, or about whether or not a tv show is worth watching.
The power going out was just a reminder of the small things I forget to appreciate, and by small things I appreciate I don’t mean electrical things, I mean the quiet things. I mean sitting and talking in the dark, and having time to think about anything you want for however long you want, and reading old books, and writing letters, or reading letters, and finding yourself satisfied in the best sort of way by what seems like nothing at all when the lights come back on.
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