Powerless

The TV flickered and then it turned off completely. The work she had been doing on the computer was gone and the kids looked at her, perplexed. They had been watching Dora, and the little one started to cry.

“What happened, mom?” said the older one.

“Just a power outage, Sweetheart,” she said, smiling.

“What are we going to do now? It’s snowy out and there’s no school,” the child asked, looking annoyed.

“I’ll think of something,” said the mother.

She went into the kitchen and looked around. Since the weather was so bad, it was kind of dark. She began lighting candles and looking around for something they could do. The stove was electric, so baking was out.  Reached into the craft closet and pulled out the Play-Doh, but she thought better of it because the little one might try and eat it.

The next thing she grabbed was the crayons and the coloring book, for the little one. She found some glue, construction paper, and pipe cleaners to build something with the older one. They set to work.

She watched her son’s small hands as they molded the pipe cleaners into a shape. He had gained dexterity over the past few months. He carefully glued the shape to a piece of paper; he didn’t glue any place that he didn’t intend it to be. He made five careful, perfect shapes out of pipe cleaner and glued them all to them to his paper. He wrote his name at the bottom, it was legible. She smiled at him and rumpled his hair, not surprised at how much he had grown.

She looked over at the little one. He was scribbling with the crayons, as expected. He had torn more than one page of the book; he seemed to be chewing on some paper. He held the blue crayon toward her.

“Byoo,” he said, and smiled, before sticking the crayon into his mouth.

She smiled and got up and walked to the window. She looked out at the snow and then said,

“If you will bundle up, we can go outside and build a snowman.”

The older one jumped up and ran to his room. He didn’t even respond because the idea of building the snowman was so exciting to him. She knew he’d like it.

When they got outside, she made sure that their hands were covered and so were their ears. Both of their little noses turned pink immediately. They were so cute and so small. They all stood there, surrounded by the whiteness of the snow. She took a deep breath and set to work, building a snowman with her children. It would melt by the next day and the power would be on soon. The whiteness would be gone.