For the last few years, each time the holiday season rolls around, I think of this quote by writer Melody Beattie: Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.

This quote has been very much on my mind the last few days, as I endured the great Northeast ice storm and power outage of December 2008.

When I heard the reports about school closings in Columbia County, New York on Thursday December 11, I paid very little attention. I was home writing and wondered why everyone was so concerned with the weather, because it didn’t seem to be raining very much that day. When I went to bed that night, everything changed in a heartbeat. It started to rain really hard and the phone would ring as the ice storm disrupted the lines. I could hear the powerful wind outside my bedroom window, the sound of a foghorn on the Hudson River and the clicking noise of various household devices turning themselves on and off.

As I drifted off to sleep, I had this terrible sense of foreboding. During last summer’s strong thunderstorms, there were a lot of fires in the area due to lightning strikes and devastation from powerful storms. I tried to just make it through the night, but as I woke up for a few moments near dawn, my hands and feet were icy cold. I felt uncomfortable but drifted back to sleep for a few hours. I didn’t make the connection yet that my area had lost power and would now be in the deep freeze for days.

The devastation hit me the following morning, when I got out of bed and realized why my body felt chilled to the bone the night before. There had been a massive ice storm in the Northeast, and now there was no power in my area. Not only was the power out, it wouldn’t be restored for anywhere from a few days to possibly a week (or more?) I’ve never been in a position where I was exposed to extreme cold before, so the possibility of days of freezing temperatures filled me with horror.

In an instant, my daily life as I knew it receded, and I was thrust into a very different world, where meeting basic survival needs became a necessity and all the other daily things that usually occupied my thoughts just didn’t matter anymore. I worried about my parents, both in their seventies, and their animals. If the power outage from the ice storm drug on for days, would my parents and our family pets be okay waiting it out in such extreme cold?

My Dad has an emergency radio that works on battery power, and I have an old Walkman I use to listen to relaxation tapes (that thankfully also has an AM/FM radio). At my parent’s house in Columbia County, New York, Dad tuned to the local radio station up the road and learned that hundreds of thousands of people were without power from the ice storm. Our house is in a rural area, but it is situated along a main highway, so we weren’t sure when the power would be restored here. We started hearing information about “warming shelters” for ice storm refugees, but the only shelter we heard about in Columbia County was miles and miles away. The instructions for the shelter clearly stated no family pets allowed.

Some people in the area were using other means to stay warm, and I could hear the din of a generator from across the field at the neighbor’s dairy farm. That really wasn’t an option for us, as we feared the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning (and soon the news reports would start to come in about deaths and injuries in the area due to carbon monoxide related mishaps as people tried to stay warm with things like generators and kerosene heaters). The only solution was to try and stay put, ride out the cold, and keep the animals warm and safe while we tried to take care of ourselves.

As the temperature in our family’s house plunged, we all piled on every piece of clothing we could find, layering pants, and sweaters, hats and gloves. This didn’t really help the bone chilling cold, and every once in a while, the drafty icy feeling would rip through each of us like a knife. I never realized how painful the cold could be. The sensation of icy cold in my extremities had an aching, burning numb sensation that started to radiate pain in my hands and feet. I worried about hypothermia for myself and my family, wondering how long we could endure such extremes of temperature before disaster would strike and one of us would have to visit the emergency room.

I think if we didn’t have our cherished family pets, we’d have gone off to a warm hotel, or tried to drive the distance to the warming center we’d heard about. However, our animals are older, and some have suffered with health problems this year, so the thought of leaving them behind in the dark and cold was unthinkable.

Just like in other events, such as Hurricane Katrina, I’m not sure officials who declare that we can evacuate without our pets, or we can seek assistance but leave our animals behind, fully realize how strong the bond is between pets and people. For many people, their animals are family, not to be left behind for any reason. We wouldn’t leave our animals in the dark and cold to go to the warming station, and I’m sure we’re not alone. So I only hope that in future disasters like this, officials who set up relief stations realize that lots of people won’t leave their pets to suffer alone, and that some provisions can also be made to help animals through the crisis.

As the sun set on a bitter cold Friday December 12, my family and I felt like we couldn’t endure another minute of the unbearable cold. We survived that day on hot coffee and donuts that my Dad had brought in from the local Stewart’s shop, and some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We had plenty of bottled water on hand and cat food for our animals (that seemed confused but slept a lot and huddled together for warmth). Joy centered on a donut or a steaming hot cup of coffee for the humans in the house.

Receiving the hot coffee in my hands, my whole world seemed to spin around its warmth and delicious taste. The happiness generated by the anticipation of a single cup of hot coffee made me realize how much we take for granted all the blessings of everyday life. As the hours ticked by, I craved normalcy. I just wanted to go back in time, to a regular day, to my usual routines. The aftermath of the ice storm gave rise to an epiphany: my problems were not very big after all, and life as we know it seemed richer and fuller when seen from the vantage point of the power outage.

My family and I went to bed with the setting sun and rose at first light. Going to bed seemed like the only way to escape the cold, by huddling under a pile of blankets and shutting out the darkness. I felt a bit like a pioneer, living on the prairie without electricity, modern conveniences, the things we take for granted in day to day life. All of the food in the refrigerator and freezer started to spoil and smell quite bad, so it had to be removed from the house. There was no water in the toilet, and no way to flush it, so the bathroom started to have a really unpleasant odor, too. As we went to bed early Friday night, almost twenty hour hours after the power crisis, the thought of another dark cold day was unbearable.

It was about sixteen degrees outside on Friday night, and about 40 degrees in the house. In bed, I tried to distract myself from the annoying vibration of the neighbor’s generator as I huddled miserably under a load of blankets. Nothing seemed to help the coldness of my extremities, and I wondered if there would be any long term damage from the icy cold numbness of my fingers and toes. I felt hungry and uncomfortable and panicked at the thought of days stretching ahead in similar conditions. When the house fell totally silent, I worried if the cats, especially the pair of fourteen year old sisters, were still breathing, not to mention my elderly parents.

As miserable as I felt, when Saturday morning rolled around, I felt such joy at seeing the sunrise, knowing I could sit by a sunny kitchen window and drink a big hot cup of coffee and have some breakfast. It was a relief to make it through the night with everyone, animal and human, still cold but alright. During the power outage created by the great ice storm, I passed the time by reading books and magazines. When it was light, I’d bundle up and huddle by a window and read, and in the darkness, my Mom and I would take flashlights and sit by the kitchen table and talk, listen to the radio and flip through magazines. I can’t imagine being alone during such a crisis and the ice storm only reinforced how grateful I feel to have a loving, close family.

During the power crisis, I would listen to my Walkman and try to catch some news on the local radio station. By Saturday evening December 13, I was starting to feel pretty desperate, and it was so depressing to hear that in some areas, power would not be restored until Wednesday December 17 or even later. Dad had the idea to go out and bring home a warm meal, and it was with such gratitude that we ate a simple meal of fast food that seemed like a feast.

We learned that there was indeed a warming center closer to our house, though it hadn’t really been well publicized after the ice storm. Still, there was the problem of not wanting to leave the cats behind in the cold. The family discussed the idea of going out in shifts the next day, possibly to the warming shelter, leaving someone home to stay with our animals.

The idea of spending another day in the cold filled me with a sense of dread and defeat. Saturday night I tried to keep busy and I picked up a fashion magazine. It talked about celebrity lifestyles, how to look five pounds thinner, and where to buy a refrigerated bathroom mirror to keep your wrinkle creams fresh! Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about what really matters, and how to live a more holistic life. In the heart of the darkness, the shallowness of this fashion magazine felt shocking and offensive to me, and I tossed it in the trash in disgust.

I returned to the book I’d been reading for days, called The Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler. Reading The Wishing Year in the darkness only seemed to make it feel even more like the author was speaking directly to me. In the book, called a memoir of fulfilled desire, Oxenhandler learns the art of wishing, and receives her heart’s desire of a man, a house and spiritual healing. I spent hours of the power crisis reading Oxenhandler’s story. How she learned about wishing, to focus on her intention, and clear her heart of obstacles like bitterness and remorse that could block her dreams from coming true.

She talked about fire ceremonies and what needed to burn. I sat in the darkness reflecting on my life, my wishes, my obstacles. What did I need to burn? What did I need to let go of to clear the space inside me for my wishes to come true? And just what were my priorities anyway? Somehow, in the darkness without any of the daily distractions of life, it seemed easier to tune into my own heart’s desires. Things that sometimes seemed muddled in the din of daily life, felt clearer. I hoped I would be able to stay focused on these new insights when the power came on, and I returned to my daily routines.

As I went to bed Saturday night, I made a crazy wish I knew could never come true: God, I can’t stand one more second of this cold, please let the power come on by Sunday morning. We went to bed Saturday night about 8 p.m. and a half hour later, I heard a sound that meant that the power was restored. I burst into tears of joy and relief at not having to spend another sixteen degree night in the cold. It’s really hard to explain the jubilation my family and I felt at having the power restored to our home; it’s hard to even express the gratitude in words. It truly felt like a moment of grace to have my prayers answered in the darkness.

The experience of living for almost forty eight hours in a freezing cold house has stayed with me. The lights are on and the heat is back and it’s business as usual, but as I write this on Monday December 15, I still feel echoes of that experience. There are still many people without power in our area and my heart goes out to them. My family already donates to several charities, but hunger and homelessness have been at the forefront of my mind. It’s been driven home to me in a visceral way that some people have to live the way my family and I existed for a few days, without food, heat, and the comforts of daily life that we all take for granted.

So as the holidays are upon us, I will celebrate, but I know I won’t forget my experience in the great Northeast ice storm and power crisis of December 2008. I’m trying to hang onto those lessons I learned in the heart of the cold and the darkness. Above all else, enduring the ice storm and power outage gave me a great lesson in the meaning of gratitude, the strength of family, the power of perseverance. At Christmas, this fullness and gratitude is even more important than decorations, parties and presents under the tree.

So while I pray there won’t be another ice storm and power outage, I know that if the worst happens, my family will pull together as a team, and make it through. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone still enduring the aftermath of the ice storm, and I wish each and everyone out there a Happy Holiday and a New Year filled with peace, comfort, gratitude and a new appreciation for the fullness of ordinary life.