Best Laid Plans....

Returning the Aggravation Pump

Grocery Bag Boots

Dominoes by Candlelight
Erin and Kat

There were so many things we were going to do--go to my daughter's knitting circle, visit a jewelry class, take walks, have my grandsons for dinner. But I flew into Norfolk on the night of November 11th just ahead of a Nor'easter and the remnants of hurricane Ida colliding right over the city. We knew we were in for a bumpy ride (I kept thinking of Bette Davis's famous line in All About Eve) and were pleasantly surprised that most of the way East from Dallas we encountered only slight turbulence. But the last half hour, as we approached Virginia, we started to rock and roll. I was sitting on the aisle but the fellow by the window was keeping watch and said the rain was heavy. At one point he asked an attendant if it was stormy in Norfolk--she said yes and that we "had an alternate". He explained to me that if we couldn't land in Norfolk we had another place to go. So there was the possibility of not landing there--I didn't want to think about that or the ramifications. I just hung on and tried to stay calm. The landing, in Norfolk after all, was bumpy but not as bad as you might expect with 50 mph winds whipping all around us. As we heaved a sigh of relief the guy at the window said, "That was a good pilot. He landed on both wheels at the same time!"

My daughter, Erin, was there waving at me as I headed to get my baggage. Outside it was extremely stormy, the water beginning to come up over the roads. I remembered how low Norfolk was, sea level, meaning that high tides could flood a lot of the area. We got home before it got too bad. I had a little snack of cheese and crackers, Top Chef and then it was off to bed with the wind howling through the trees, oddly fun to listen to as I drifted off to sleep. The next morning the news was all about flooding and road, school and business closures. We decided to stay put as most streets around Erin's house were flooded.

Inspired by a recent post I made about baking cookies, Erin got out her recipe for Big Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cookies, one of my all time favorites and in an hour we had gigantic, wonderful, choclatey cookies. This would be one of the last times the oven was functioning. That afternoon Kent prepared a Chicken in a Pot, stuck it into the oven and while waiting for it to do it's thing we watched television and talked. But about 1 hour into the chicken's roasting the lights began to blink out, blink on, blink out and back on. This occurred about 5 times until finally we were left totally in the dark, our chickeny meal a broken promise. That night we dined on cheese, crackers and apples again, and those wonderful cookies. While sitting in the dark, Kent and Erin's young friend, Kat, came to visit, against their better judgement, but young people do what they want. We decided to play dominoes by candlelight rather than sitting around bemoaning our chickenless fate. A neighbor, whose wife was stranded somewhere else, came over offering Baba Ganoush and good, red wine. We passed on the Ganoush, but not the wine and he amused us with jokes as we continued to play. Kat ended up spending the night, at our insistance.

The next day there were still no lights and the rain was still pounding and Kent decided to check the basement for flooding. Indeed, there was a lot of water in the basement and there was no electricity to run his tiny pump. There were also no boots for his feet, so the ever resourceful Kent got himself some garbage bags and some tape and fashioned boots and attacked the flooding. During the day it was discovered that the power outages were widespread but not necessarily in consecutive houses due to ancient power grids. The neighbors behind us had power and were willing to share, so a long cord was run from their house and attached to Kent's pump. There was optimism at first but the little pump could not do the job. That is when the Search for a Bigger Pump began. Since we were getting cabin fever and wanted a hot meal we piled into the truck and accompanied Kent to Home Depot, Lowe's and Costco looking for a pump. The evidence showed that there had been many searchers before us--others had discovered earlier than Kent that their basements were swimming pools. We stood in front of empty shelves with our mouths agape. At least we got a hot lunch that day. At home Kent changed his leaky garbage bag boots for waste paper basket boots and kept bailing.

We ate dinner, cheese, crackers, apples and cookies in the dark again that night, but there were no dominoes--Kent had to go back to bailing. Erin and I amused ourselves with crossword puzzles and her knitting and talk, while her two doggies, Tasha and Maggie snuggled up to us for warmth. The lights stayed off.

The next morning the lights were still off and Kent, Erin and I got in the truck to go to the gym to take showers and to try Home Depot and Lowe's again, hoping more stock had come in. It hadn't. The last stop was Harbor Freight and lo, there was a pump, a gas operated one that wouldn't require electricity. A miracle! We celebrated by having a fabulous lunch at an Indian restaurant and then went home to put the pump to work. A long piece of plastic pipe had to be attached to the pump to move the water out of the basement, but for some reason known only to plastic pipe makers the darned thing was flat. Erin and I spent the next couple of hours making it round--we stood on it, we heated it and stood on it, we stuck a baseball bat and a rolling pin into the ends, we stood on it somemore. We got it more round than flat, put the fittings on the ends and presented it to our supervisor, Kent. But by this time Kent was finding that the Miracle Pump was turning out to be the Aggravation Pump, leaking gas and refusing to start. It was deemed a failure.

But just then, at 5 in the afternoon, the lights came back on, so all was not darkness anymore. The rain had stopped during the day, there was little wind, we heated up sandwiches left over from a hot lunch a couple of days before, Kent went off to his rehearsal of Brave New World and Erin and I settled down to some good old TV watching, which seemed luxurious at this point.

The next two days, my last, were more what I had expected--visits to Barnes and Noble, portions of which were taped off because they were too wet, President's Park and Yorktown. The weather was warm and beautiful, the leaves were gorgeous. We did have an odd meal in Yorktown at a place called The Rivah Cafe'. The name should have tipped us off. Rivah', Southern for river. Erin ordered something called The Hot Brown--it was hot alright, but not brown--open-faced turkey on white bread with a Parmesan Sauce on top and topped with bacon and deep friend onion slivers. It was about as good as it sounds, which was that it wasn't. Later we learned it was invented by The Brown Hotel in Kentucky but at the time it just seemed weird. My lunch was slightly better but with an odd touch--a piece of Virginia ham stuck under my prawns. We walked up the street to a Ben and Jerry's to end the day on a positive and tastier note.

It surely was not the visit I had expected or that Erin had planned for me, but I left knowing that my daughter and her husband have a good marriage and that they work well together in a crisis. Some spouses would be getting tense with each other after 2 1/2 days of no electricity and a flooded basement, but Erin and Kent were supportive of each other and demonstrative; if not cheerful, they were at least sympathetic and they communicated well. Kent's frustration level was high as he tried to dry out the basement, but he never took it out on Erin. Erin was trying to make things nice for her Mom but I never saw her lose her temper. Those observations made the trip worthwhile for me. Mom's love to see thier kids happy and content. They have had some challenges over the past year but with the kind of loving relationship they have there isn't much that they won't be able to endure.

This trip will stand out in my memory, much more than a conventional visit would have. It will be the Year of the Nor'easter and one day even Kent will be able to laugh about his waste paper basket boots.