Curse The Darkness?
There’s no time like ten minutes too late.
Around 8 am yesterday, we lost our electricity. Someone clipped a power line. What was first announced as a four-hour outage is now a thirty-two hour outage and counting.
Our house is so quiet with all of the fans and air purifiers stilled. No tv. Before I knew how long we were going to be down, I listened to an audiobook. Now I wish I hadn’t because I think my phone is dead. In our bedroom in the back of the house, we get bright morning light, but it starts to get dark back here pretty early.
I suggested to my husband that he find the various electronic candles we would need before it got too dark, but of course he waited. To his credit, he found them all in the dimness (I suppose it might seem darker than it actually is to me because of the cataracts; I always have the brightness cranked all the way up on all my devices.)
We went to sleep much earlier than usual, but I woke up around 3 am and started this post.
Car seat cover in the dark.
When I woke up, I was remembering an occasion, maybe thirty-five years ago, of my dad and me trying to put a car seat cover on the driver’s seat in a new (to me) car I just gotten.
The cover was fake fleece and my dad wanted to put it on to protect the upholstery for resale purposes. When he said “let’s do it now, before you go home,” I said okay.
The installation of the cover was not simple with straps and hooks and going under the seat. It was getting darker and darker inside the car, even with a couple of doors open.
I don’t remember which one of said it, but one of us said, “It’s good we decided to do this when it wasn’t blindingly bright out.” We laughed and laughed.
The reason I can’t remember who said it is that if it was me, I would have been channeling his sense of humor. Even before he died a couple of years ago, I channel his sense of humor constantly.
Years later, for another car, and another car seat cover, he said “let’s put it on—it should be way easier to do than that last one.”
I said, “Okay, but it is awfully light out.”
We laughed and laughed.
Oh, Teri, this is so funny and tender. Just love the car cover story. It reminds me of the time - it only took once! - that my husband and I went wilderness camping with a tent we’d never assembled. How our marriage survived, I still don’t know. But: lesson learned, and we laughed about it.
That's the most wholesome story I heard all day! It's so sweet the relationship your dad and you had and even though he is gone, his humour stays within you.