Power Out

Two Angels with Nothing to Say to Each Other

Recently humongous oaks in our neighborhood went down on two consecutive days, and we were without power for much of the weekend.  The funny thing is, how cheerful we all were about it.  We admired the massive trunks, sectioned into pieces and piled in the neighbor's lawn.  The neighbor in question, cheerfully pointed out her demolished mailbox, and talked about how funny it was that the emergency crew carefully set the mailbox aside and then piled the tree on top of it.  We clucked our tongues, and told each other that with all the rain recently, it was only to be expected that trees would go down, the soil being so sodden.  Another neighbor, walking by with his dog, had stooped to pick up some poop, and announced that he had gotten about "eighty percent of it."  The neighbor with the ruined mailbox was perfectly content with the twenty percent of remaining dog poop, and we chatted about this and that, the fallen tree creating an unexpected holiday mood.

My next-door neighbor was out of town, and when she returned I got to regale her with the story of the tree, and she said it was to be expected with the ground so sodden and all, and I agreed.  When my wife called (she was also out of town) I told her about the tree, and she also brought up the sodden-soil theory.  So between the neighbor with the ruined mailbox, the next-door neighbor, and my wife, I got three harmless and pleasant conversations out of one tree.

If there is such a place as heaven, which seems pretty unlikely, I wonder how any of us would manage to endure it.  We're so fond of our little disasters, provided they don't do anything more serious than crushing the odd mailbox or depriving us of power a few hours.  Heaven, think of it, unending perfection, complete unbroken perfection: never would the clouds get so sodden that trees would knock down power lines and short out all the halos.

What would we talk about?