Tuesday of last week my wife Jo and I headed for Pawley’s Island. Our plan was to spend a month at the beach to recalibrate. I packed four novels and a jigsaw puzzle. My plan was to walk on the beach in the morning and rock on the porch and read in the afternoon. We got to Columbia and stopped for lunch. The woman at the next table overhearing our plans, leaned over and said, “The Governor’s going to announce an evacuation for the whole coast this afternoon.” So we turned around and drove home.
By Sunday I was itching to get out of town. The sun was out; Hurricane Matthew had passed. “How bad can it be?” I asked. We found out. There was no electricity from Andrews, SC to Pawley’s Island. No traffic lights working. There was no power at our house on the mainland. We boiled water on the grill. Publix was open so we got takeout from the deli for lunch and supper. We lit candles.
Life became slower but deeper.
First, the days are so much longer without distractions. Darkness fell at 7:00. For a while we read with flashlights, but I kept looking at my watch asking myself if I could go to sleep at 8:30. We cleaned the yard; we walked on the beach; we scrounged for sources of light and ways to cook. I worried about finding ice to keep the food from spoiling and batteries for flashlights. On Tuesday morning I said to myself, “This isn’t how I would have chosen to slow down, but it’s effective.”
Second, as the poet says “Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things.” Everyone lost power. In a sea of scarcity instead of fearing one another, people reached out as fellow citizens. The local church invited everyone to come for a spaghetti supper and recharge their cell phones. A local volunteer fireman told Jo and me we could come get ice for our coolers at the fire department. A neighbor loaned us batteries for our radio. There wasn’t pushing and shoving in the supermarket; there was some laughter and a lot of helpful advice—what gas station was open; where to get coffee; what store still had supplies. No one cared about who was voting for whom. We were merely human beings.
I came to the beach to think about the future but found that what matters is the present moment. Instead of figuring out the next year, I thought how we could have dinner without a stove or a refrigerator. I remembered the goodness of the warmth of the sun and the sweetness of how people console one another in times of crisis and loss. As Jo and I cleaned the front yard from debris, people stopped and talked instead of getting on with their busy lives.
During this election season it’s too easy to despair over a loss of community. It’s too simplistic to think only of divisions and dissension Let’s remember somewhere on the planet the power is always going out, and amid the difficulty people are rediscovering the goodness of having one another. My hope is that when the power returns, I’ll remember what matters in life and what doesn’t and that we as a nation will too.
+Porter