I was standing outside for a moment earlier, soaking up the sun in 70-degree temperatures, listening to the birds and kids playing in the distance, and something hit me. Ever since we thawed out, I’ve been having these flashbacks of what everything looked like outside just last week. It reminds me of a random scene from some movie, where quick, dystopian images flash through the mind of a psychic, but only briefly, and then back to normal. Like little video messages from the future. It’s making me feel almost….well, almost like nothing is real anymore. Or, maybe it never was?

The solid glacier that was my front yard just under a week ago, now a dull, greenish brown, is nonetheless warming up and mostly dry. There’s also this longing for the flashback I can’t quite explain. It was just such an invasive collection of darkness, and innovation, and community, and connection, and solitude, and reliance, and realization, and perseverance. It was a defining window of time for me, and I imagine for others. And it was just long enough to stick, like the ice did….in Austin, Flippin’ Texas y’all…It stuck for like, multiple days. Unprecedented. Never in my lifetime. And don’t even get me started on the doors of our government that came flying WIDE open for all of America to see, exposing the dirty little details of our Lone Star State’s failing infrastructure.

This thing we shared, my fellow Texans (in the midst of a seemingly never-ending global pandemic…), was an excellent example of an idea about human happiness that I’ve always believed in: The struggle’s we power through in life are necessary because they make the sweeter moments matter.

Maybe those little flashback images of our home entombed in ice make me a little sad because, despite all the preparations in the world, we learned how unprepared we truly were for this sort of thing. For years, I’ve watched KXAN weather. We’re talkin’ religiously. On any given day, I can tell you what the weather outlook is for the coming week. I guess I’ve always just been drawn to the weather and knowing what to expect. That being said, I knew we were about to get slapped by the Polar Vortex. I knew about it at least 2 weeks before it happened. I knew that the Friday before Valentine’s weekend was the last chance I’d have to get out of the house and get what we needed ahead of the storm. And so I did, naturally. Still, regardless how prepared we were to ride out the frozen waves, we had to ration, and collaborate, and muster through the evenings without screens as a viable option.

We learned to appreciate the electricity when we lost it, but at the same time, we also learned to appreciate those “making do” moments: playing Connect 4 by candlelight, telling each other goofy jokes, creating a sled out of a commercial A/C unit cover, wrapping our socks in plastic due to the lack of proper snow shoes. Most of the time, we’d get settled into our new, barbaric way of life, as cozy as we could possibly be without heat in single-digit temperatures, and the power would unexpectedly pop back on, as if it had never left, leaving us baffled as to our next steps for a few moments, then forcing us into something like an electricity shopping spree before it was all gone again—which in our case meant we had anywhere between 15 minutes and a few hours to prepare a meal or heat up the house. It was just as disorienting when the power came back on as when it was shut off. And there was no way to plan for that because it seemed completely random. I’m also pretty sure I have PTSD from my OCD and ADHD partnering to manage the constant lifestyle fluctuations brought on by this madness, but I digress…

Now that the lights are on and life is getting back to normal, I’m finding it difficult to crawl out of this funk: a combined memory of having to “make do” and a sort of “yearning” for the need to make do.

Am I saying I miss the weather?

Yea, sue me. I guess I am, in a way.

For all of its bitter sweetness…

It coulda been worse.