The Great Storm in North Jersey:Fri. through Monday

Friday, November 2. I had left towels soaking in the washing machine when the power went out. I had to go down the basement in the dark and wring them out. I left them to dry some outside for a couple of hours. I washed the front of my hair in cold water, and rolled my hair onto curlers.

Jim comes to tell me it is too cold in the house and he’s going to work in Newark, where there is plenty of power. (The Mayor of Newark, Cory Booker had apparently insisted to the utilities that his city be restored to power immediately or there would be widespread looting.)  Maeve is going back to the Dominiques’ house, where there is light, heat, TV, electric for her laptop and hot water for showers.

I feel rather abandoned, which is one of my go-to life themes, since I am adopted. I remind myself I can too easily revert to feeling this way, and it’s not productive.

 I head out to the Laundromat by the A&P to throw the towels into the dryer.

Sitting in my car waiting for the towels to dry, I call my sister Margaret Opatrny, who lives blocks from the Long Island Sound in Guilford, CT. They had been evacuated, and are staying with her in-laws. My nephew Spencer has had school all week.

I call my brother-in-law John, who reminds me it is my nephew Nick’s birthday.

“I sent him a card on Monday, before the power went out,” I say. “But I also Facebooked him today.”

I call my sister Marian, who is at work stuffing envelopes with election materials. She is yawning and still jet-lagged, but apparently energized by returning to the 80-degree weather of Arizona.

I make chili in my black cast-iron pan on the grill, using more of the hamburger meat Jim bought Saturday. My refrigerators are smelling ripe.

Mike has gotten the news he passed the New York State Bar, and he goes to the Edison Ale House in Newark after work to celebrate with friends. Jim waits and drives him home to Mahwah, where they eat by candlelight around 8 pm.

 

Saturday, November 3. Our friend the NYC news director comes to have an early breakfast with Jim at the diner, gas up her car, and have her laundry done at the Laundromat in the A&P complex.

Around 11 am, I drive Mike to the so-called “warming center” located at Ramapo College, where Mahwah residents can get warm, recharge their electronic devices and take a shower. Mike takes a shower with toiletries I’ve pulled together.

Then I drive him down to the Newark Courthouse where he works and where he has left his car.

On McCarter Highway we see a storefront in a strip mall that advertises in huge green metal letters “DIVORCE $399.” In only slightly smaller letters below, it says, “Spouse’s signature not required.” Mike says to me, “You can stop here on your way home.”

Everybody is out in downtown Newark on Market Street. We pass stores titled “Pretty Girl” and “Urban Denim.” “Urban Denim” seems not so much denim as the glittery, barely-there outfits you might see on girls writhing around poles. Mike tells me the old courthouse was designed by the same architect who designed the US Supreme Court building. (The architect was Cass Gilbert.)

On the way home, I drop off donations at Goodwill in Paramus, and also shop there. (I get a mink fur collar and a copper casserole pot.) Inside the resale shop, it is as though the storm never happened.

I stop at A&P for chicken. I am making barbecued chicken and beans tonight on the grill. A&P seems to be running low on meats.

After dinner we watch the first episode of “Downton Abbey” on my iPad. Jim falls asleep a few minutes into Episode Two around 7:30. When I tell Tom the next day that we go to sleep very early without power, he says, “It’s just the same as Carleton Island.” Our summer house on Carleton Island has no cable TV. When the sun goes down, you go to bed…or you make a bonfire on the beach.

 

Sunday, November 4. Sunday "Blue Laws" are suspended in Mahwah by the Mayor and in the whole of Bergen County by the Governor. Governor Christie has a reputation as a bully, but in this crisis, he is winning kudos as an able and peripatetic leader. Storm-battered citizens are literally throwing themselves into his arms.

Jim has already breakfasted and gone to Mass when I wake up. He tells me the town needs volunteers at the police station down the block at 11:30 am  to distribute sandwiches, soup and crumb cake provided by local restaurants. I sing, as usual, at 10:30 Mass, and the choir lingers to talk about our respective power situations. Even at this point, six days into the outage, about 4,500 of the 9,000 Mahwah residents who initially lost power, are still without power. (Statewide, 62 percent of New Jersey lost power as a result of Superstorm Sandy.)

When I get back home, Jim calls to say they have more than 100 volunteers and don’t need me. I walk down to the police station anyway to see the scene. People are wedged into five or six rows of long tables eating and talking. It’s like a lively Irish wake without the body. Instead of table centerpieces, there are multi-outlet surge protectors.  I plug in my dying cell phone, and procure a peanut butter-and jelly sandwich. I chat with an EMT worker named Janet who recognizes me from church. Janet is from the Fardale section and has been staying with her mother in Suffern. No sign of Jim or my daughter Maeve.

My son Tom calls from Bard College as I walk home back up Miller Road. Tom is always a good audience and he is SHOCKED that we are still without power and SHOCKED that we have gone to gas rationing (only odd-numbered license plates allowed to get gas on odd-numbered days, and even-numbered license plates on even-numbered days.) He is SHOCKED that Governor Christie has wisely canceled Halloween. (Mahwah’s Mayor has organized a “trunk-and-treat” in the municipal complex parking lot on Monday that will allow kids in costumes to trick-or-treat from car to car.)

I pass my neighbors Gary and his son Michael Corrado and my other neighbor Paul Gioni walking down to the Police Station and wave to them. I have never seen so many neighbors out walking without dogs.

When Jim comes home, I tell him I am going to the warming center at Ramapo College to get warm and charge up my devices.

As I drive down Lawrence Road under the draping downed wire, I see a solitary figure sitting in a small Orange and Rockland utility truck. I saw him there yesterday too. He doesn’t seem to have any capacity to fix the wire. He is just keeping vigil.

He reminds me of a story I read in the book “Life in the Old Dutch Homesteads:Saddle River, NJ,” about when native Americans living in Bergen County decided to move west  in 1756. One solitary American Indian named Mashier was left behind to watch and care for the dead in their burial ground.

This seems to be Rockland Electric’s Mashier.

Sunday night, we have decided to go for dinner to “Priya,’ our favorite Indian restaurant in Suffern.

Once we get settled at the restaurant, Jim picks up a call from his friend, the Mayor. Jim is most alive in a crisis. It is no accident he has made his fortune as a spin doctor for companies in crisis. I can hear the Mayor is equally excited and engaged. The Mayor has apparently talked to a cadre of Southern utility workers parked in their trucks at the Pilot fuel depot on Route 17. The utility workers say they have been given no directions from Rockland Electric.

But Maeve thinks it is rude for her father to talk on his cell phone once food arrives. And she won’t put a spoonful on her plate until he ends the call. She also says she can’t enjoy her meal because she is sitting opposite me.

Maeve had thought she would be going back to her high school Monday after a week of forced absence because of the power outages. But the school left a second message Sunday evening, saying there wasn’t enough bus transportation to get students to school.

When we get home from the restaurant, we watch an episode of “30 Rock” on my iPad. Then I head to bed around 8:15 pm. Sleeping under the down comforters is the easy part. Within 15 minutes, you’re warm as toast. Before I go up to bed, I bring the dogs into the family room, where it is somewhat warmer than their usual lair, the kitchen. I lift Duke onto the sofa and I tuck blankets around both dogs.

I wonder if Mashier is still out there in the dark, guarding the ghost of a power line.

Monday, November 5. I go to Mass at 8 am, drop off recycling, and get coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. I get gas at the Citgo on Franklin Turnpike in case Mike needs to take my energy-efficient Prius to handle electioneering complaints with his judge in Newark early tomorrow on Election Day. The van behind me beeps at me to move up on the short line despite the fact that  I am honoring a sign that asks us not to block the driveway to the diner. It takes only 5 minutes or so to fill up with gas.

I hear from Maeve after I’ve gotten coffee. She is already at the Dominiques. I suggest we go to the warming center at Ramapo College to submit 3 more college applications: William and Mary, Wheaton (early action due November 15), and American. She says she will work on those applications at the Dominiques.

I talk by cell phone to my oldest Matt, who is heading into work in Newark in his energy-efficient Prius. Matt and his wife Mel got power back in their Sparta home on Saturday. But, before they left Grandma Bette’s home in Little Falls, Melany took her mom Susan to get her car fully gassed.

The weather-generated crisis was particularly wearing on Susan’s nerves. She apparently hinted that Matt and Mel should secure a generator for their home. But Matt ignored any such hints and kept watching sports on Bette’s big-screen TV.  The middle of a crisis was no time to get into a scrum for generators, he said, and they were safe and warm at Grandma Bette’s house.

Matt says he and Melany have driven past Susan’s house and her whole neighborhood among the tall pines by a lake in Andover looks gutted and vacant. Matt thinks it could be weeks before Susan gets back into her house.

Matt also says a lot of the panic behavior we’ve seen all over the place stems from workaholics who suddenly can’t go anywhere or do what they’re used to doing. So they channel all their manic energy into driving around and waiting on gas lines.  Matt said he is sure things will normalize when people can go back to work and discharge their mania where they are used to discharging it.

Shortly thereafter, I am sitting in the family room drinking coffee and eating breakfast before the gas fire when suddenly the lights come on. 10:22 a.m. I  shout “Woo-hoo” and go down the basement to make sure the furnaces are operating. They are roaring. The temperature on the indoor thermometer in the dining room reads 52 degrees.

I call Jim, who is in South Jersey, to let him know the power has returned.

He says, “They can all thank me later.” I think he is referring to the fact that he and our neighbor Gary Corrado on Sunday found the utility pole that seemed to be the source of the outage in our neighborhood. Jim got the pole number and told his friend, the Mayor.

Jim has a bit of a savior complex and he thinks all good things happen because of him. When a bad thing happens, he looks to assign blame elsewhere. This has created many interesting dynamics on our marriage.