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Emergency maturity
Well, wasn’t that a party? Mother’s Day at our place began in a quiet, dark house. No hum of appliances. No CPAP whir. No quiet drone of the furnace. No whoosh of the cool-mist humidifier. The first eight or nine hours of Sunday were spent without hydro. It may have been our first Mother’s Day in the dark, but it wasn’t our first adventure without power. We’ve managed through many power outages and Sunday morning was just “one of those days”. We weren’t too worried because we figured someone would throw a switch, sooner or later, and we’d be back in business. If you’re like me, and you might be, the first thing you want in the early morning is a cup of coffee. So, did I have to forgo my morning coffee on Mother’s Day morning? Nope. LOML and I are an outdoorsy kinda family. We hightailed it to the camping gear stash, hauled out the Coleman and did what we had to do to caffeinate. We were semi-prepared for an emergency—of the caffeine kind.
When I think about Mother’s Day, I think about my mom and what she did to keep us fed, clean, clothed, loved and warm. I know how fortunate I was to have been part of her life. If I learned anything from my mom it was how to be self-sufficient. That woman could cook a complete meal for her family of nine over an open fire, a camp stove or a wood stove when she had to do so. As kids, during the summer, we spent a lot of time outside, which meant campfires or Coleman stoves. Living outside of the City in a fairly new subdivision sometimes meant the hydro was a bit sketchy. We hardly noticed those kinds of problems because Mom knew how to make an adventure out of a setback. I think I learned that much from her. When LOML and I woke up to a dark house on Sunday, it was just the first part of our Mother’s Day adventure. I have to say, though, I might not have been as prepared as Mom would have been. LOML and I sipped our coffee and laughed about what life throws around there in the people-verse and we knew we had to up our game as regards emergency preparedness. Like a few of all y’all, I am becoming more concerned about blackouts/ power outages. Climate change isn’t going away and I’m not entirely sure the County’s current infrastructure is going to able to support the explosion of new homes. Pretending we aren’t on the edge of a problem is a problem.
Although I don’t really feel as though there’s an apocalypse on the horizon, there will be more times when the utilities we depend upon may not be available at the flip of a switch. So, now I’m thinking about putting that emergency kit together. You know the one I mean!? The one I wrote about putting together a few of years ago when toilet paper and flour were high demand items and difficult to source. The very same emergency kit I half-heartedly attempted to put together and lost interest in when The Pandemic took a step back and the pressure was off. The “kit” I abandoned when bog-roll and Robin Hood weren’t black market items anymore. Well, the time has come to put that emergency kit back on my agenda, although I’m just not sure where I’ll find room to store enough water for two people for seventy-two hours along with enough food for the same period of time. We’ve got great flashlights with fresh batteries, but neither of them are where we think they should be when we need them. Mother’s Day was a good example of that. “Where’s the flashlight? Who had it last? Isn’t it in the pantry?” We found out a windowless bathroom can be really dark when there’s a power outage. That being said, do we need to designate a special area of our house to stash all of the water, the food, the crank-operated radio and flashlights, the extra clothing, the tool kit, the emergency shelter and the sleeping bags? What about toiletries and medications? Are we going to have enough water to shower, shave, shampoo and brush our teeth from the suggested amount at the start of the list? Perhaps we need one of those big, white plastic tanks for water. Will we even care about toiletries in a true emergency? And while we’re talking about toileting, what about it? In a real emergency when the water is no longer available to flush the toilet, where do we take our business? Should we put in an order for a load of whatever it is that makes outhouses less unpleasant? Maybe we should be looking to put an outhouse in the backyard? Do poop and scoop bylaws apply to people? If we bag it, then what? Do we need a permit for that?
So many questions like, “Where are the emergency granola bars? Did we eat them on our last trip to Toronto?” I don’t think we replaced them—and I don’t think LOML and I are mature enough to handle an emergency bigger than caffeine.
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