In the rare instance natural phenomenon catches me all uninhibited and full of wonder my vocabulary digresses to that of my nine-year-old self. I’m both slightly embarrassed and relieved there are simple things that still impress me, not that weather is uncomplicated, but it remains beyond the influence of ordinary individuals. It never snowed much when I was a child, and more than one holiday season was spent with air conditioning humming in the background almost but not completely drowned out by my mother’s cosmopolitan taste in new age christmas music.

With snow and ice, Saturday morning’s power outage didn’t come as as a surprise. We were fortunate with a small gas heater in the master sitting room and a gas range, we could have functioned for a few days if the power company hadn’t been prepared to clean up fallen trees and restore power so quickly.

There is this unexplainable instinct that afflicts some. It’s akin to the uncontrollable desire to slow your automobile when you approach a car wreck. People claim it’s in the interest of safety, and while that is true, they also seem unable to turn their stares away from the accident and toward the officers directing traffic. They want to confirm people are okay and their help is either needed or not, but the deeper part of humanity that pulls them in like magnetic force, is simply the desire to know. It’s almost incontrollable.

My grandfather and my father-in-law were both that way. Genuinely concerned about the parties involved but completely driven by curiosity.

So Saturday morning, sans electricity and sans common sense, my partner declared we should see if it were possible to reach the local coffee house for caffeine and carbohydrate refreshment. Fine. It’s so much easier to gloat in person than on the phone, and coffee would be a nice bonus, if I’m wrong.

We made it out of the driveway, but not much further. Somebody needs new tires. I mentioned we have a second car with better tires and four wheel drive, so we coasted back into the driveway and changed cars. A smarter decision, but not as smart as staying home would have been….but I know his curiosity is driving him and he simply must know, because it is who he is. We proceed without incident, unless you consider the absence of electricity at the coffee house an incident.

Returning home,I see kids with sleds testing out snowy banks and iced driveways and my inner voice is telling me to offer them cash for a go at a steep hill. I am hungry for it, but my adult self asks if I want to break my thirty-five year streak of avoiding the chiropractor. There’s a part of me that doesn’t listen, but as I reach for the door handle, a different voice reminds me my uncoordinated self would be viewed over and over on youtube.

We were drinking coffee and sharing a pastry. Compared to the grey sky and the misty drizzle outside, everything in the coffee house warm and fuzzy, if you can call a store full of strangers in a the city warm and fuzzy. After several failed attempts at conversation, we drifted apart directing our attentions to separate things as people who spend many hours together do.

He studied the map on the wall, and pointed out places of interest (to him) and shared some of the same stories he has before, either to me or at me. I took to people watching, observing various postures, styles of dress, and beverage choices. The room was filled with interactions, some direct, most indirect, people like me watching without revealing they are paying attention.

I get the same sense of these strangers I’ve had of other strangers. It doesn’t matter what city, bar, coffee house, an airport, or museum, I always find myself feeling like the people I’m observing have it together, in all the ways I do not. I know I’m seeing a flash in the pan, a single moment from their lives, certainly not an adequate amount of time to entitle me to any level of judgement (as if we can ever know anyone that well or long enough to know all of them), but I can’t help myself jumping to the conclusion, they know who they are and they have life figured out.