Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness

It turns out that all the proverbs are true.

As my neighbourhood and city begin the recovery following this weekend's double tornadoes, I find myself saying and thinking all sorts of truisms that have emerged from crises worse than this. I suppose it is human to want to soothe after catastrophe strikes. We immediately move to make it better, to fix, to heal. Some things we can fix with tools, others with words.

Home is where the heart is. I realized this weekend that when push came to shove, my preference was to hunker down and hibernate in the midst of a crisis. No doubt the stores and coffee shops were full of people stocking up on supplies, but I had no interest in going beyond the surrounding streets of my neighbourhood. And, while I myself walked around to take in all that had happened, I felt a slight resentment of those who seemed to come from elsewhere to gawk and take photos for their social media news feeds. Instead I wanted to surround myself with my family, have tea with my neighbours, and insulate myself from the rest of the city. Although we were without power, we had food, water and each other.

There's a silver lining in every cloud. Silver, not gold or platinum. I love silver. It is cool and crisp, unassuming and dependable, yet beautiful. I don't trust people who are always seeking "the best". Why the best, why more, why shinier, when good is more than good enough? Perhaps this makes me seem unambitious. When the clouds rolled in late Friday afternoon, the darkening sky was ominous and heavy. As the rain started, I quickened my pace to the car and began to drive home. Half way there, the rain and wind were too heavy to continue and I pulled into a plaza parking lot to wait it out. With the radio newscast interrupted by tornado warnings, the thought occurred to me that perhaps sitting in a parked car in an open lot was not the safest place to be. By the time I realized that I should look for a place to take shelter, the wind had stopped blowing and the rain had lessened to a drizzle. I continued home, stopping for takeout on the way. At least Mucho Burritto was still open, with power and food, and the lineup not too long.

Count your blessings, not your troubles. Four. I have many blessings. But my four greatest blessings are my husband and my children. With these four people in my life, I can go anywhere, do anything and be happy. I hate Monopoly. I am not competitive, I am not inspired by money, and I don't have the patience to build an empire one green house and one red hotel at a time. But Monopoly by candlelight, without power, was enjoyable because I was with these four lovely (though highly competitive) people. Ok, a glass of white wine also helped. Make that five blessings.

Many hands make light work. The relief in our home was palpable when a neighbour a few streets away said she had power and we could go over to charge our devices. There were trees down in her back yard, but we were relieved to be able to charge our phones and "reconnect". We compared notes on the street, or by texts. Some had power but no damage. Others had experienced some damage but had power. Fences were righted, fallen trees chopped to smaller bits. Ice packs and coolers tallied and at the ready. All around us people were at work putting the streets and power lines back in order. In a city of a million people, power was back within a few hours or a couple of days for most. While there are still parts of the city without power, everything is being taken care of in a peaceful and orderly manner. (This is a government town, after all.)

Make hay while the sun shines. While I am certainly grateful to have emerged unscathed, with my home and family intact, I find myself wishing that we had a few more candlelit nights ahead, that we had a few more days without wifi, that we had to be creative for just a few more meals. We were just starting to realize that in fact we were in pretty good shape : we had candles and flashlights, we had batteries and a portable phone charger, we had a portable cook stove, we had food; and, while the freezer would have held out for another day or two, we had a plan to distribute its contents to those with power if necessary. We were prepared and had more than enough of what we needed. Although we had never planned ahead with a tornado in mind, my husband was excited to be able to pull out his head lamp and  we didn't have to ration food or candles.

Tonight I lit candles again, despite the power restored.

One year ago, my family in Puerto Rico, together with their fellow 3.5 million islanders, were hit by hurricane Maria and were without power and water for months and months on end. They had to make decisions and to ration their time and resources every day, just to put together the bare necessities, not knowing how long it would take for life to return to normal. An estimated 3000 people perished in the aftermath of the storm, and recovery and reconstruction continue still.

No one died here this weekend as a result of the tornadoes, and there were very few serious injuries. There are many families, particularly in Dunrobin outside Ottawa, whose homes were levelled. I can only imagine their devastation. Some neighbours' homes and cars sustained damage. We lost many beautiful trees. These are significant losses, indeed.

But in the darkness, there is light. And every once in awhile it is good to be reminded of it.

Home is where the feta is

Photo credit: Jody Martin

My cousins tease that a good job in Greece is as a feta seller to me. I buy, and eat, it by the kilo. A single serving for me might last a week or a month for someone else.

The perfect feta is a balanced mix of salt and tang, creamy and crumble. It pairs well with extra virgin olive oil and oregano, crusty bread and a ripened tomato. Kalamata olives on the side are divine.

It's best enjoyed at a tavern by the beach, after a few hours of swimming and floating in waves under the baking sun, sand stuck to your feet and your skin slightly sticky from the salty sea, with a bottle of cold water (or beer) and a plate of fried calamari or smelt. Or, melted in the oven, with roasted red peppers and oregano, to dip with oven-baked pita.

The food of my Greek heritage is simple and good, filling and nourishing to both body and spirit: fresh vegetables or beans slathered in olive oil, fish and seafood pan-fried with a side of greens, white grilled meat or poultry, baked pasta or potatoes. And feta on the side of everything.

When I was a kid we could only buy feta at the Italian food store, also the sole source of kalamata olives and olive oil, which my mother used to measure out and mix with vegetable oil to make it last longer. Now, even McDonald's does a Greek salad with crumbled feta and black olives.

I've just returned from a too-short, two-week holiday in Greece, where we ate fresh figs and grapes plucked from our hosts' trees, and feta accompanied every meal: layered with phyllo pastry for breakfast, on a horiatiki (village) Greek salad for lunch, alongside a souvlaki or on baked pasta for supper. We swam in the Aegean, racing against the waves and calling out "There's another one! Watch out for that one!" under the bluest sky and the hottest sun. We trekked through the ruins of Mycenae and Knossos, the dust of thousands of years' past on our feet. We drove past blackened mountainsides, stark evidence of the previous month's wildfires in which over 90 people lost their lives as the wind propelled towering flames across acres of dry brush in the matter of minutes.

Now at home, and still jet-lagged despite several days back in the eastern time zone, I indulge in Canadian-made feta on toast for breakfast despite my husband's sideways glance. Outside, it starts to rain. The grass is green and the trees are lush in Ottawa, but the newspaper documents wildfires blazing in Western Canada.

I've napped each day this weekend, giving into jet-lag and lulling myself to sleep, imagining I am still in my beloved Greece, where the cicadas buzz with deafening cacophony, where the sea cradles me with refreshing waters and buoyancy, where the sun bronzes my skin despite lathering on the sunscreen, and where the hospitality and feta are plentiful.

To donate to recovery efforts from wildfires in Greece:
https://www.desmos.org/

To donate to recovery efforts from wildfires in BC:

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/crisis-relief-centre/2018-british-columbia-wildfires/