out of the storm and debris

There is noth­ing quite like a day of inter­na­tional travel — includ­ing a mind-numbing five-hour lay­over in Detroit — to turn even the most social per­son on earth (me) into a mis­an­thropic wretch, mum­bling obscen­i­ties under my breath at the frac­tious tod­dlers, quib­bling cou­ples, teenagers who walk over my toes as they text while lis­ten­ing to their iPods… And those are the nice people!

But now I am set­tled into a sticky Nau­gahyde booth at the “Online C@fe” with inter­net ser­vice for the first time in five days, plus a place to plug in my phone.  I pre­dict a shoul­der mas­sage and a plate of excel­lent local Lake Michi­gan sushi, fol­lowed by a thrilling teeth-brushing ses­sion with run­ning water — amaz­ing! -  before I board my plane to London.

Our last few days at Red Gate Farm were not the lazy, self-indulgent time I pic­tured when we waved good­bye to our last vis­i­tors and set­tled in for the end of our sum­mer hol­i­day.  I had not counted on Irene.

As of the wee hours of Sat­ur­day night, we have been with­out power, and as annoy­ing as that was, worse for me was the no-water part of hav­ing absolutely fab­u­lous well-water.  No elec­tric­ity, no pump, all that deli­cious water stays right where it is, underground.

Luck­ily we thought ahead.  I heeded the words of the sweet lit­tle teenage check­out girl at my super­mar­ket, who upbraided the cus­tomer before me for stock­ing up on bot­tled water.  “The hur­ri­cane hasn’t come yet!  You still have run­ning water!  Fill up every con­tainer in your house, start­ing with your bath­tubs.”  I came straight home and John and I got to work fill­ing Nonna’s bath­tub, the drinks tubs from my mother’s birth­day party, sev­eral stock­pots and an empty kitty lit­ter tub.  We felt a lit­tle silly, as if we were over­re­act­ing like all the other peo­ple who had spent 14 straight hours watch­ing the Weather Channel.

Not.

Thank good­ness we did!  Because while I had also over-prepared in buy­ing tons of food, wor­ry­ing that the stores would stay closed for­ever, the real issue came with the loss of power.  With no refrig­er­a­tor, the worry of how to keep food cold was far more press­ing than hav­ing enough to eat.  I learned another impor­tant les­son: ICE.  Some­thing told me to buy a huge bag of it, on the the­ory that it would keep my fridge cold for a lit­tle bit longer than if we didn’t have any, and that 8-pound bag stayed frozen, if a bit drippy, for the dura­tion, five whole days.  The vichys­soise, the many cheeses with­out which I did not feel I could sur­vive a nat­ural dis­as­ter, the beef fil­lets.  “This will be a gourmet apoc­alpyse, damn it!” Avery said.  Thank good­ness she’d had her “Job Cre­ator” ice cream fix the night before.

How I have learned not to take fresh water for granted.  Five days was not long enough to cure me of the life­long habit of turn­ing on the tap.  We devel­oped a sort of triage sys­tem for water needs, like in the Lit­tle House on the Prairie books when every Sat­ur­day night, the mother gets the clean tub of bath water, then the father, then the old­est child, down to the lit­tlest child.  Our ver­sion of this was that I started with a stock­pot full of fresh water to boil for pasta or pota­toes, then in went the corn on the cob, then I scooped out the food and strained the water into another stock­pot for wash­ing the dishes, then poured it into toi­let tanks!  Com­pletely crazy.  But what on earth is our world doing pour­ing clean, san­i­tized water into toi­let tanks, any­way?  I will try not to become an envi­ron­men­tal crank over this experience.

Our last nor­mal moment was a trip to Pen­zeys for me for Fox Point Sea­son­ing, then din­ner with Jill and her fam­ily at the “Japan­ese Steak­house,” which used to be my favorite thing my baby niece Jane could say.  Gor­geous stir-fry and sushi, with the usual accom­pa­ni­ment of poor Molly’s tears at the leap­ing hibachi flames!  Poor girl.  We said our sum­mer good­byes and crawled home in lash­ing rain on the dark­en­ing high­way, a har­bin­ger of things to come.  I awoke in the mid­dle of Sat­ur­day night to deaf­en­ing silence, not a good sign as I sleep with a white-noise maker.  And this is what we saw.

I must tell you that this is what the lawn nor­mally looks like!

In fact, this sec­ond photo was taken just hours after the first.  The water receded fairly effi­ciently in our lit­tle ecosys­tem of ponds and brooks.  Anne’s pond hap­pily gushed, and received an ancient wil­low, bro­ken harm­lessly off in the night.

Half the leaves seemed to have ripped from the trees, turn­ing our sum­mer ter­race into a wet and wild autum­nal one.

Avery and I toured the grounds in the still sprin­kling rain that after­noon, real­iz­ing how we had dodged a bul­let, retain­ing all the ancient and mas­sive trees which dwarf and pro­tect our beloved house.  These branches emit­ted an unearthly scream­ing sound, like a cry­ing baby, as they rubbed together in the lin­ger­ing wind.

Thank good­ness for my gas stove, and for the stock­piled water!  I was able to pro­duce scram­bled eggs and bacon, and with­out a toaster, Avery’s new favorite food: grilled bread with moz­zarella.  I actu­ally did not mind learn­ing to cook by can­dle­light and gas lamp.

Later that after­noon, as the rain tapered off, our neigh­bor Mark came by to tell us about South­ford Falls, a sort of yawn-making local park with a “water­fall” which has never failed to under­whelm any vis­i­tor we took there.  Not on Sunday.

Now THIS would be a spe­cial spot for a roman­tic picnic…

The sheer power of Mother Nature was over­whelm­ingly present.  Any­one who fell in would die, cer­tainly.  Hardly the dull pub­lic attrac­tion of other summers.

By Mon­day after­noon, the vaguely pio­neer spirit of our electricity-, water-less lives had waned.  We suc­cumbed and went to Star­bucks to join the rest of our town for free inter­net access!  It turned out that 74% of our lit­tle town was with­out power, and most of them were sip­ping venti soy lattes.  I was able to con­nect with my friends and read of their reac­tion to the adven­tures of Irene.  Since they are my friends, they are funny.

Fiona: “Hur­ri­cane Irene has offi­cially been down­graded to… British Summer.”

Molly: “Just fin­ished a hand san­i­tizer sponge bath.  Need water to come back on.”

As often hap­pens after a tor­nado or hur­ri­cane, the fol­low­ing days were jew­els of per­fec­tion.  Just look at the shad­ows of the leaves danc­ing on the clap­boards of Red Gate Farm.

Tues­day and Wednes­day were more of the same, work­ing our way through the still-chilly things in the fridge, find­ing more inven­tive ways to re-use water, feel­ing a bit sorry for our­selves hav­ing the end of our hol­i­day used up in cri­sis mode.  We played end­less rounds of “Aggra­va­tion” by the light of the can­de­labra given me years ago, one of a pair, by my chum Binky.  Under the cir­cum­stances, its Gothic excess was just what the doc­tor ordered.

And then Rol­lie stepped in.  Of course.

It was my first expe­ri­ence with a gen­er­a­tor!  We were able to top up the fridge, to charge our com­put­ers and phones!  There was never a more dul­cet sound than its grind­ing rum­bles.  We lis­tened in glee for sev­eral hours, until it had to go back its owner who had sev­eral bears and deer in his freezer.  Seri­ously.  This is rural Con­necti­cut after all, where gun­shots at dusk are not drug gangs, but neigh­bors clean­ing up the coy­otes from the valley.

Aside from a large num­ber of dis­placed stones mak­ing up the walls of the pond, every­thing got back to nor­mal at Red Gate Farm, at least outside.

Inside is another story.

Because one mas­sive drama is never enough in my life, we were vis­ited, both before and after Irene, with a demo­li­tion team to take apart the inte­rior of about 40% of my house.

You see, dur­ing our win­ter absence from Red Gate Farm, there were mas­sive snow­storms which resulted in a phe­nom­e­non called “ice dams” liv­ing on vul­ner­a­ble parts of our roofline for much of the months of Jan­u­ary through March.  And those ice dams decided it would be much nicer to live INDOORS, which resulted in leaks, mold and falling walls and ceil­ings in my kitchen table area, my laun­dry room, the liv­ing room, and Avery’s and our bed­room ceilings.

Because we did not want to sub­mit our many sum­mer vis­i­tors to the deba­cle that would be the demo­li­tion, we kindly waited till the end of the sum­mer, never of course dream­ing the project would be com­bined with a hur­ri­cane.  But there was a beau­ti­ful discovery!

Absolutely beau­ti­ful 200-year-old lath and plas­ter, per­fectly unscathed from the ice dam­age.  It is the unex­pected ben­e­fit of a house with­out insu­la­tion — there is nowhere for the leaked mois­ture to stay, so it dries itself out, leav­ing only dam­aged sur­faces, but under­neath, an archi­tec­tural trea­sure, which we’re going to try to keep exposed.  How excit­ing to be reminded that houses were made of TREES.

We learned a lot, talk­ing to the con­trac­tor whose inept and rather piti­ful work­ers were about to rip out all the lath before speak­ing to us.  Thank good­ness I hap­pened to peek in as they worked.  The con­trac­tor said, “It’s impor­tant to keep in mind that you could have ver­min liv­ing behind those walls, or in the attic, before you expose it.  Because most insur­ance poli­cies don’t cover ver­min like squir­rels.  Bet­ter if the dam­age is done by rac­coons.  That’s covered.”

“But squir­rels are mam­mals, just like rac­coons,” I objected.

“Well, turns out there are sub­sets of mam­mals,” he explained.

“I won­der if I could argue that there are sub­sets of humans, too,” I sug­gested, and John jumped in.

“Teenagers.”

“I like that!” Avery mut­tered in mock outrage.

“Well,” the con­trac­tor said, shak­ing his head, “I’ll go with the human-subset the­ory.  I’ve often mar­veled that despite the efforts of a lov­ing God, and the process of evo­lu­tion, my employ­ees have survived.”

Finally the con­trac­tors left, to be replaced some­time this fall by a restora­tion crew.  We can only hope all goes well, in our absence.

The sum­mer offi­cially ended with a final barn-cleanout on a beau­ti­ful blue-sky day, dry­ing the tarps that had col­lected hur­ri­cane water.

As always, the boxes in the barn are a never-ending source of amuse­ment, dis­cov­ery, nos­tal­gia.  This time we dis­cov­ered hun­dreds of pho­tos of us as new­ly­weds in the Sey­chelles on hon­ey­moon, John’s par­ents on hol­i­day in St Barts, real LET­TERS from his mom with hun­dreds of news­pa­per and mag­a­zine clip­pings – 20-year-old ver­sion of her emails now with lots of links to things we’ll find inter­est­ing.  No mat­ter how many times we go through those boxes, there is always some­thing to discover.

We had one last ten­nis game, one last swim at the town “Poo,” one last gen­er­ous and wel­come shower there.  “No need to swim, just use our show­ers if you need to!” said a cheery sign at the pool.  Tri­cia gen­er­ously offered her laun­dry facil­i­ties.  It takes a vil­lage, to sur­vive a hurricane.

And here is an unheard-of sight in my life: a com­pletely empty fridge!  We decided we could not rea­son­ably expect the power to come back on any­time soon (although it did just before I left for the air­port!), so every­thing went.  It will be fun to fill it up at Christmastime.

I spent my last night at Red Gate Farm alone among the can­dles, hav­ing been invited to Rollie’s, to Tricia’s (“din­ner in half a hour!” her lovely hus­band drove over to say), and to Mike’s (“for a meal or a shower or what­ever!”), but I decided to stay home and pack, get life in order, pre­pare to leave it all behind.

John and Avery report that all is well in Lon­don, the poor child hav­ing gone to the first day of school straight from Heathrow!  She has been put into a won­der­ful new maths set — not too much pres­sure, I hope — and her been reunited with her beloved friends.  Tacy the kitty is talk­ing up a storm.  “I told her to save some of her sto­ries for you,” Avery assured me.

And so I shall be there in just 12 hours or so, leav­ing the joys and sor­rows, the fla­vors and fam­ily and gen­er­ous friends, the pres­sures and panoply of expe­ri­ences that make up our Amer­i­can sum­mers.  Lon­don, here I come!