No, they run on magic

Sunday night at about 9:30pm, I heard a loud POP! and then Bizzewwwwwwwww…beep beep…beep beep…as everything around us shut down, and we were left in darkness.

My hubby had been talking to his brother on the phone, and he had just wandered upstairs to the main level. Claire and I were downstairs. She was playing quietly with her blocks on one end of the couch and I was on the other, playing Bejeweled.

“The power went out!” I yelled to my hubby.

“I think the transformer on the street blew!” he yelled back. This is a lot of excitement for a Sunday night…

“Momma. Don’t be scared…” Claire said. “But, I need my puppy.”

I laughed in the dark. “I’m not scared. Where is Puppy?” I asked, patting my hand around on the couch.

“He’s on the tray,” she said calmly. “Wow. It’s really dark.”

I found Puppy and scooped up Claire. I made my way in the dark toward the opening that leads to Daddy’s office and the stairs. I was careful not to trip over the babydoll stroller or the leather ottoman, and hoping I didn’t step on any of the blocks she’d been playing with.

Yes, we used to have an automatic light that would come on in the event of a power failure, but sadly, it stopped working months ago. We haven’t had a chance to replace it. “Yesterday would have been a great time to look into that,” I thought to myself. Our basement is dark. Very dark. There are underground caves with more light than our basement. Luckily, some moonlight was streaming in the window wells in my hubby’s office, below the deck, and my eyes adjusted quickly.

“It’s okay,” I said, holding Claire close. “The power just went out. It’s no big deal.”

I called the power company from my cell phone to report the outage, and my hubby called his brother back with the remaining juice left on our back-up battery on the computer (we don’t have a land-line), to tell him that he’d have to cut the chatting session short.

We then took the opportunity to go out on the deck and enjoy the nice, cool evening.

“The street lights on that side must be on a different grid,” I said, looking past our fence in the back. But, even without the street lights, the moon was so full that our backyard glowed with an eerie brightness.

As we were standing there, watching the night, I realized it was time to put Claire to bed. Normally, her bedtime is 9pm, but on the weekends, we sometimes let her stay up a bit later.

“It’s time for nighty night, Claire. But, I want to tell you something. Something is going to be a little different this time. Because we don’t have electricity, we’re not going to be able to turn on your light tonight,” I said, remembering that the little touch-lamp we usually turn on the lowest setting, wouldn’t be working tonight.

“Oh, okay…” she said.

“It doesn’t have batteries, and our power went out, but you’ll be okay…” I said, hoping this wouldn’t be an issue.

“What about my dreams?” she asked. “Do my dreams need batteries?” She was very concerned that she’d have to sleep without her nightlight and her dreams.

“Your dreams?” I said, amazed that she, a two-year old, would even ask this question. “No! Nope, your dreams don’t need batteries or electricity. You’ll still be able to have them tonight,” I said as she hugged me and I snuggled into her neck.

And with that, we went back into the house. Daddy used his powerful mag-light (seriously, that thing is brighter than the sun) to energize the glow-in-the-dark stars and moons we’d painted on her walls before she was even born, and that coupled with the moonlight peeking through her curtains was enough to convince her that she didn’t need the nightlight.

Well, that, and the promise that her dreams don’t need batteries.