Everyday Miracles

No two days are ever the same here. Well, they aren't anywhere, but especially not here. Just yesterday I was telling J how much I like it here--for the moment. How things seemed to be going as they should. After all, my house was neat as a pin, there were fruits and vegetables in the bin, and all our laundry had been washed and dried. The kids were watching Mary Poppins and were sedate. It was good.

My only (tiny) complaint was that it was creeping upwards of 90 degrees in our home. But that's usual. We sweat here. A lot. We drink tons of water, and sweat. The thing that always consoles me, though--our little evening treat--is that we turn on the A.C. in our bedroom and exhale. Sometimes we also study Hindi. Other times we watch season one of the Golden Girls...

So last night, though I was hotter than dragon's breath, I felt hopeful that the A.C. was going to breathe new life into my wilted self. J and I were positively giddy when we put the kids to bed and then winked at each other and pushed the 'on' button on the little gray remote.

A blast of arctic air poured down from the machine that gives us hope. I even pulled the covers luxuriously over me 'cause I was a little cold. Pure Heaven! But then...Oh then! the lights surged dangerously, the ceiling fan started speeding up as if it were out of the movie Poltergeist. J and I looked at each other with a sense of impending doom. You see, we'd already had problems with rickety wiring in this place and our A.C. had already been re-wired once to "eliminate" the problem.

We promptly turned our great cold hope back off. Within five minutes the air in our bedroom was closer than an Indian train ride. I begged J to turn it back on. He obliged, and then it happened. The electricity blew out in our entire house--and did not come back on. As the minutes turned into hours, we knew our food would spoil in the fridge, and our over-worked inverter would burn down. Then we'd be without fans to take the edge off the heat.

We dragged our mattresses off of the bed, and down to the coolest part of the house. We set up camp in a spare room, turned on an oscillating fan (which, we knew, would last for a few hours on the inverter and then--nothing). It was Saturday night, so I was trying to figure out how we could get anyone to come and get us out of this mess on a Sunday morning. I had already decided to take my kids to McDonald's and hang out in the air conditioning if we couldn't get anyone to help us.

Then the oscillating fan went out and we lay there in the thick darkness. I tried not to move a muscle. I prayed, "Lord, I know this is a long shot. I know the wiring is blown to bits in this house. I know that. But please, please, just make it come back on so that we are ok tomorrow." And then I fell into a fitful sleep.

I awoke to the oscillating fan revolving as usual and our electricity back on.