Enveloped in Darkness

This is a re-post. It originally appeared on another blog on March 16, 2014. It is re-posted for sentimental reasons.

On Friday night, with my two kids already asleep and I was preparing to go to bed myself, the lights went out and we were enveloped in darkness.

I waited a few moments for the electricity to come back. Few minutes, several minutes, half an hour later, it didn’t. So, I brought out the candles which I kept for such situations and felt grateful that I still have enough to last for hours. I also brought out our rechargeable light with fan. It didn’t last long, however. Probably, someone used it before and whatever power it had was just a leftover of the previous charging.

The minutes turned to hours. It seems like our subdivision or probably the entire city of Caloocan was covered by a thick suffocating blackness. It was then that I realized how dependent we become to electricity to live.

During the 80s, when I was in grade school, some remote areas in our province didn’t even have electricity and they were living just fine putting up mosquito nets at night and opening door and windows to let some air in. But right now, sleeping without electric fan is nightmare and a day without checking out the computer (which requires electricity) for social media updates is depressing.

Five hours and six pieces of big fat candles later, the power came back and we were finally able to sleep.