Blackout

I was writing about the day’s phone photos when the sky outside suddenly flashed, and then every light in the house went out—the power had failed. For the first few seconds, my mind remained with the photographs and how I might describe them. Only when the UPS came on and began its steady beeping did I realize that this was a real blackout.

When was the last time I had experienced one? I could no longer remember. Back in China, there had been the occasional brief outage without warning, but the power always returned quickly. The worst of it was usually losing a piece of code halfway through writing it. This time looked less promising. It seemed unlikely that the electricity would be back before morning.

I searched the house for anything that could provide some light and eventually found two headlamps I used for photographing the night sky. The moment one came on, I felt as though I had evolved from a cave-dwelling creature into a civilized human being. Everything beyond its beam, however, remained submerged in darkness. The scene carried me back to childhood.

The headlamp’s light softened to a dim yellow, almost like the flame of a flickering candle. I was a child again, holding a candle I had just lit with a match and running excitedly toward the table.

I could hear my mother complaining, “Why has the power gone out again?” At the same time, my father picked up a flashlight and went outside to see whether a fuse had blown. I took the matchbox, slid out its little tray and prepared to make a block of wax from the melting candle. Before long, my father returned. Clearly, he had not found the problem.

Soon, the only sound in the room was the drip of wax falling into my matchbox. My father held a book close to the candle, straining to read by its unsteady light. My mother brought out a bamboo basket of wool and knitting needles, sat down to one side and began knitting a sweater. Warm candlelight filled the room. The shifting shadows made it seem a little livelier, though the house remained quiet.

A knock at the door broke the stillness. As expected, when the door opened, a group of friends burst in from the darkness. Each carried a different flashlight, held beneath the chin to turn their face into a ghostly mask. Their innocent laughter filled the heavy room. I grabbed my favorite flashlight and rushed outside with them into the dark. Behind me came my mother’s familiar voice: “Come home early, and be careful!”

A crack of thunder, and the candle in my hand became a headlamp; the laughter gave way to silence. I was still sitting in the dark, my face starkly lit by the screen of my phone, its glare bringing a sharp ache to my eyes. In that daze, whether I had ever finished making the block of wax no longer seemed to matter. All that remained was the remembered flavor of a childhood I could never return to.

Cover story: Pictures of my 2024