Comfort Inn

When Sarah was six years old and younger, our area experienced regular power outages during storms, especially winter snowstorms. Washington D.C. isn’t exactly known for its rugged response to the weather. The government and the schools here have traditionally closed at the drop of a hat, sometimes even pre-emptively closing or announcing a delayed start of several hours if snowy or even unusally windy or frigid weather is expected. We are not tough, and many people have called this a Southern town.

The problem was compounded when Sarah was really little by the fact that utility lines here are not buried, but are outside and run from pole-to-pole down the street. We also have a huge tree canopy around here that we love and are very proud of, but whenever it snows or ices over or the wind blows, tree branches fall and knock down power lines, and the power goes out. It used to go out for days sometimes, but finally PEPCO got its act together and began doing some heavy duty tree-clearing and line maintenance after the 2012 Derecho, which had us in a hotel for a week along with the rest of our county.

We had similar but shorter hotel stays during the 2010 “Snowmageddon” (the local name for back-to-back snowstorms that brought several feet of snow) and a couple of other earlier power losses that lasted overnight. My parents took to asking us if we had hotel reservations whenever snow was forecast. We didn’t really find it funny. It was a good thing Sarah was still very small and easily carried the half-mile or so from our home to one of the downtown hotels through the snow (or the muggy heat of the Derecho).

It was a little scary for her when the power went out if she were awake, especially if it wasn’t completely light outside. She would gasp, and give a little cry, and look around for us. I would run over if I weren’t next to her, and hold her hand, and explain that the lights went out, and that we were having an adventure, and Max would be looking for the flashlights and the candles and so forth and we’d call PEPCO to get some sort of estimated waiting time for repair.

If the temperature were falling (or rising) too much in the house, we booked a hotel, or made a reservation we could cancel. Sarah’s condition made it difficult for her to regulate her body temperature. Often one leg and one arm would be freezing cold, and one leg and one arm would be hot. We didn’t want to take any risks with her by toughing it out in an unheated or very hot house, and let’s face it, we were wimps too.

During these times of power outages, and then later during the Pandemic shutdown too, I had a little motto or adage that I would tell Sarah sometimes if she were frightened. I would say that our family was “Always together, always safe, always having fun.” She would smile when I said this and it seemed to comfort her. During the first Pandemic shutdown in 2020, I even made an outline drawing of our hands – Max’s, Sarah’s, and mine – and wrote those words underneath it and put it on the wall where she could see it for extra reassurance. It reassured me too. How I wish it were true.