Our Long Weekend II

A continuation of yesterday’s post.

When we arrived at our new friends’ house on Saturday night, I was relived to be in a home again. It felt wonderful to be taken care of. Our hosts served us bread and soup, and Ben and their two-year-old cracked each other up during dinner. After dinner, the kids jumped around the house, shrieking companionably and playing with every toy they could find. Sunday morning, we had pumpkin-gingerbread pancakes.

I couldn’t fully relax, though, because we still didn’t know when our power would be on. We kept calling our home number, hoping to hear the answering machine. Finally, after we had showered on Sunday morning, the machine picked up: we had power!

Our house was already warming up by the time we got there. We examined the refrigerator and freezer and found we’d be able to salvage some of the food. I turned on the Christmas tree lights. We were home.

It struck me that our two days of wandering in the dark were excellent preparation for Advent, which, after all, is supposed to give us a little jolt out of the normalcy of our daily lives. As we were packing up to leave our house on Friday, I tried to distract Ben with his new book: a picture book with the King James Version of the Christmas story. When I saw the picture of Joseph walking beside Mary on the donkey, I realized on a gut level part of what they must have felt--though their journey was of course much more inconvenient, uncomfortable, and tiring than the one we were about to take.

All the offers of help made me think about hospitality, generosity, and kindness--even Christian charity (although the people we stayed with were not Christian). Our two days of wandering also made me appreciate our house: the beauty of warm yellow light in every room, being able to eat hot food, listening to Christmas music.

I had planned on getting an advent calendar and advent wreath a few days earlier, but in our search for places to stay, those tasks had been pushed to the side. After we got home, when Ben napped in his very own crib, I went out and bought both. In a celebratory mood, I also bought sparkling pomegranate juice and white roses at Trader Joe's. The cashier asked if the flowers were for a special occasion, and I told him they were in honor of getting our power back. He said his was still off—a reminder of all the people across Missouri and Illinois still in the dark. In fact, even today, hundreds of thousands are still without power, and in the St. Louis area, eight deaths have been blamed on the storm. We had a long weekend, but we were fortunate.

Before we held hands for dinner, we lit the Hope candle on the wreath, and it burned steadily as we ate. Since we were two days behind on our advent calendar, there a piece of chocolate for each of us after dinner. After we blew out the candle, I sat by myself at the table for a minute and felt a sense of calm. After a year and a half, our house—and St. Louis—are starting to feel like home.