Where were you? Many of us can remember who we were with, what we were wearing and even what words were said if we were around for important, shocking, or pivotal moments in history.

This is the one-year anniversary of the Great Power Outage of 2023.

Remember? Where were you?

I was doing my regular thing that I do during a storm: sitting and watching.  I had the weather on and my family had retreated to the basement. Suddenly, it looked as though someone was standing in the backyard with a chainsaw and tossing limbs from trees up onto our deck.  

I decided to go downstairs.

It had been a particularly warm few days, and I had just told someone on the phone earlier that day how grateful we were for a good air conditioner that was still doing a great job cooling our 25-plus-year-old house.

Just another thing I took for granted. Air conditioning. Maybe I wasn’t grateful enough?

That final sound. The power is out. The strangeness. Usually, it doesn’t last long.

The first few moments of a power outage are peaceful. In the summer, you crack windows and let in the cooler nighttime breezes. You light a few candles and enjoy the quiet.  It’s sort of fun to walk out on your front porch and see how dark and somewhat spooky the neighborhood looks.

That was the weekend of our regional theater awards, and a group of judges had seen fit to nominate me, as well as many others, for a show we’d all been in a few months back.  

There had to be a big part of me that thought I had a good chance of snagging the award, because I invited all my kids and family to come along. My friends would come. Everyone was going to get dressed up.

My family arrived on Saturday and already knew what they were in for. We had a couple of little, battery operated fans used for camping. We’d already started playing “taps” for some of the food in the fridge that we knew would probably be thrown out soon if things didn’t change.  

We tried to have a good time and play some games, sweating like pigs. My son played his guitar and we laughed in the flickering darkness.  

My mother, who lives a couple of hours away, had wisely decided to stay in her air conditioned home and drive over at the last possible moment.  

Wouldn’t you?

The folks who stayed in the house that night took cold water baths and made the most of things. None of us slept under covers, and I remember waking up in the middle of the night on Saturday to a nice, cool breeze that teased us all with thoughts of a possibly cooler day.

Which it wasn’t. The day of the awards, we had to think about staying cool enough to get our glad rags on and, luckily, drive in an air conditioned car to the awards venue, which was far enough away that it had electricity.  

We enjoyed ourselves immensely, even though I came home empty-handed. It was great to have my family and friends together to laugh and get all dressed up.

But, it was sorta like Cinderella. We returned to the hot box we call home, shed our finery, and settled in for yet another day of doing our best to stay cool.

We toughed it out at an air-conditioned restaurant, lingered in a couple of stores, and picked up another bag of ice for our dwindling food supply.

How many of you would like to have the money back that you spent on all that spoiled food?  

If we had it back, we should buy a generator.

Delirium set in for some people, and luckily our cellular data worked so that we could check the Ameren bulletins and map to see when power would be restored.

The most recent prediction was sometime Monday night.

But as we puttered around Monday morning, text messages and Facebook posts started sending rumors of an earlier time.  Around 11 a.m., the lovely hum of the fridge began and we ran around turning on ceiling fans, cranking the AC, and shutting windows.  

The dogs flopped on the floor, seeming to sense the coolness that was coming, and after all that heat and what we thought was misery, I did what any sane person would do.

I made a pot of coffee.