Dobleve

I remember snow days growing up in Denver, Colorado with a nostalgia bordering on romanticism. I remember awaking in the morning and first noticing the absolute and almost deafening silence that a few feet of snow brings. Out my second story window I’d see tree branches wilting to the ground under the weight of snow and forming (what to me as a child was an almost magical) snow canopy as the branches touched each other across the street. But the best part of snow days, of course, was getting a free day off school. A day where everything was just a little bit more fun and cool because you know you should’ve been in school. We’d watch too much TV, eat whatever we wanted from the fridge, stock up at 7-Eleven on junk food, and go out in the streets and play with everyone else who got a free day off.

It’s spring in our neighborhood in Granada, the Albayzin, and one of the hallmarks of this season is frequent power surges that blow our fuses. Due to this we have several monstrous surge protectors throughout our highly computerized house. The best of them however only provides enough power to allow for some time to try and save data and properly shut down the computers in the case of a true power outage. Yesterday morning we had just that, a true power outage. As Brian rushed around trying to shut down the computers securely I began to worry about the food in the fridge, realized we’d not likely get a hot shower, and that the entire day might be blown in terms of getting anything done.

I went upstairs marveling at how dependent we are for every little thing on the electricity in our house and noticed right away how deafeningly and beautifully silent it was without any of our computers, clocks, hot water heaters, etc. running. As I thought about what we’d do for the day, I got that old snow day feeling. We could do whatever we wanted; it was a freebie day where we should have been working and responsible but during which we absolutely could not without electricity.

After Brian took a short but intensely painful (judging by the sounds coming from the bathroom) shower, we decided to head downtown. Along the way we passed many of the day laborers who work construction in our neighborhood who clearly were waiting out the power outage as well and enjoying sitting on the wall along the river in the sun. Bar/Café owners stood idly in doorways waiting for the lights to come back on and watching the world go by. An already relaxed neighborhood took on that not-your-average-workday feel and everyone was smiling.

In town we had a beer and tapa before noon, bought lots of fruits and vegetables to have a “cook out” on our grill (in case of a truly all day power outage) and shopped for a long anticipated new camera. In short, I’m pretty much already looking forward to the next “snow day” in the Albayzin.