Blackout

The Boston Herald     

It took me an hour and 10 minutes to reach her and I wouldn’t have if she hadn’t told me about “American Idol.” She said that she’d hit redial non-stop for two hours before she got to vote for Clay. “You can’t give up, Mom. If you keep dialing you eventually get through.”

I started dialing my daughter on her cell phone Friday afternoon the second I heard about the blackout. My son lives in Manhattan, too, but I knew where he was. At work. With people. Safe.

But Julie?

It’s strange how fear builds, how it isn’t sudden and intense like cymbals clanging. It’s more like a distant train, a hum at first, a tremor that you try to ignore, but can’t, because it keeps getting stronger and bigger and louder and closer. And there you are right in its path, the bull’s eye. And there’s not a thing you can do but stand there and wait for it to run you over

I knew my daughter was on the subway on her way home from her day job, teaching, to get ready for her night job, waitressing.  I knew her husband was out of town, that cell phones don’t work underground, and that since September 11 her biggest fear has been getting trapped on a train and dying there.

Sometimes she accommodates this fear. She walks 40 blocks home because fear gets the best of her. Sometimes she springs for a cab. Always, always she chooses the car closest to an exit and is the first off the train when the doors open.  

Maybe she walked home this day, I hoped. But I knew she hadn’t.

The news reports were vague. Everyone kept saying it “appears” to be just a power failure. It “appears” to be unrelated to terrorism. But there are scattered fires across New York. And there was a long shot of the fires. And people are abandoning their cars. And the cameras showed this. We’re not exactly sure what is going on, was the message.   

I remember 1965 and that power outage and how it was a different world then. No one was afraid. The lights went out and it was an adventure. But now? 

On television they kept replaying footage of people being led out of the subway. “We thought it was terrorism,” these people said.

When Julie was little we played a game called “Guess what I’m thinking.” We’d lie in my bed, foreheads touching, and I would say, “It’s a color” and think purple as hard as I could. And she would say “purple.”  “It’s a number between 200 and 300,” and I would repeat 144 silently and she would say “144.” It was amazing how many times we got these things right.

I played that game again Friday. It was all I could do. If I thought, “It’s okay” hard enough, maybe she would be okay. If I thought, “power outage” maybe she would know that that’s all this was.      

And that’s all she thought it was. I got through to her finally, I don’t know how. You press “Call History” on my cell phone and there is no record that we talked. But we did. She was on 60th street walking home. She had been stuck underground for 45 minutes. But nobody panicked. People thought it was just a problem with the train.

Strangers eventually led those who didn’t want to stay on the train in the dark, off the train, through the tunnel and the maze of steel. She said they skirted the third rail. She was calm telling this, calmer than I was hearing it. She said she was on her way to her brother’s to sit on his stoop and wait for him to come home. “I’m alright, Mom,” she said. “Really.” 

It all comes down to this, doesn’t it?  That the people you love - your children, your family - are safe.  If they’re safe, you’re safe, too. And if they’re stuck in a tunnel, in the dark?

You hit redial, you panic and you pray.

And if you’re lucky you finally hear their voice on the other end of the line and hear newscasters say that it was just a power outage after all.