Hurricane Irene came barging into Long Island early on Sunday morning and while we’re safe and sound, there’s a lot of mayhem in her wake.

We went to bed on Saturday night, the kids in our room in sleeping bags with flashlights at the ready – and drifted off to sleep with the news people whipping themselves into a frenzy over the upcoming onslaught of Irene.

When I awoke at 4am, the cable was rebooting, the air conditioner was off, but our bedside clocks were still glowing steadfastly.  I went downstairs for a quick recon mission and everything seemed fine. Even the dog was cheerful.

About half an hour later, there was a loud boom of thunder and the sickening sound of trees splintering around us. A second later, the power went out completely.  The kids were still asleep, but Mary Elizabeth and I were wide awake.  Our biggest fear with Irene was not flooding or the power being out, but that one of the old, huge and increasingly decrepit trees around our house would come crashing through the roof, wanting to join us in bed.

Luckily that didn’t happen, and we just lay there listening to the howling wind around us, and the rain lashing against the windows, and praying that nothing came crashing down.

I woke up the next morning around 8am and took the dog for a walk to survey the scene.  The devastation was pretty impressive, with massive trees down across the roads, many branches down at our place and most alarmingly, large, felled trees bouncing up and down – suspended by power wires – like the Tree of Damocles, waiting to come crashing down on a passing car.

Several days later the power is still out throughout our neighborhood and it’s now a matter of waiting for it to come back.

Without the distraction of television or computer, I’ve had some time to reflect on what this loss of power feels like, and how it mirrors our life.

Those of you who have lost power – either with Irene, or under other circumstances – know that it can be a real pain, and have a serious impact on day-to-day life.  Living without a refrigerator or without lights changes the daily pattern of your life.  While candlelight is romantic and atmospheric, in the long-term I think we all look forward to the brightness of light bulbs again.  Getting a lot of take-out meals is fun and delicious, but eventually we all start pining for a home-cooked meal.

And while I’m happy to have access to the computer at work, not having it at home, and not having television definitely puts a crimp in our style.

The good news for all of us of course is that eventually the power will come on.  We know that the inconvenience is temporary, and that before too long, our lives will return to normal.

But for us the power went out at 7pm on December 5, 2009 and we’re still waiting for it to come back on.

Before I get too dramatic, I’ll say that our power has been restored to a certain degree.  Mary Elizabeth’s recovery has been in many ways miraculous and we are forever grateful for that.  She’s alive, awake and aware.  She can travel and participate in many of the activities we used to before.  But there’s a lot that has changed too, and I think that was reinforced during some of the trips we took this summer.

Imagine if after a loss of power, only select appliances and lights came back.  The front hall lights, a few outlets, the microwave and maybe the guest room lights.  But the refrigerator and television have yet to return and may never come back.  Entire rooms in your house are dark and without power.  You wait and wait, and the certainty that 100% power will be restored begins to fade.

You look across the street or down the lane and you see that everybody else has power.  You can see their big screen televisions through their living room windows.  You can smell delicious home-cooked meals coming from their kitchens and admire their brightly-lit windows.

But of course we adapt.  We cook in the microwave and don’t go into the darkened rooms anymore.  We bring food in daily and eat it right away, going to spots in the house where there are lights.  We learn to appreciate the soft glow of candles.

You get the idea.

Living with the inconvenience of a power outage is a lot easier when we know that the electricity will be fully restored, but with some stamina and discipline we forge ahead with a greater awareness of what we have and what we don’t and look for ways to be thankful that the power isn’t completely gone.