#5 - Let There Be Light!

 So on Tuesday our electricity was turned off by CoServ. It seems I skipped a couple of payments. I remember seeing the interruption notice, but I didn’t pay attention to my last date to pay 143 dollars. I felt so bad when I called Wednesday morning to figure out what was going out with my account since I pretty much thought I was up to date, and the employee told me that the power had already been turned off that morning. I almost cried. What does one do? One pays whatever they’re asking for because life without electricity is unthinkable? I had to tell my husband and I feared he would be mad. But he was not. Actually, he was very understanding with me and accepting especially when I told him our power would be back up the next day, Wednesday. Now I imagine many people have the routine of a nightly bath or shower, so they just get up, dress, have breakfast and go. Not us. Our family of three takes their shower as soon as we get out of bed. Otherwise the day seems a pretty dirty daunting task to face. Wednesday morning we woke to the news that we had no hot water. A big surprise for us. We figured since our gas bill was up to date, we could count on having hot water so we could shower and face the day. Somehow it’s not like that, something to do with the heater having electric ignition, as was explained to me by the ever nice folks at CoServ. That paralyzed us...to the point that my daughter and I stayed home from work and school, both of us having additional reasons as to why getting dressed and going out was not a realistic possibility. Raul and his boss are scheduled to put the newspaper to sleep on Wednesday so there was absolutely no way that he could not not go to work. And he feels much more strongly about the necessity of a morning shower for all human beings. He felt awful all day long. Now why did I decide to write my Trust Me about this? Because of the reactions we really don’t talk about that I can’t ignore. The idea of shame comes to the fore. My husband actually asked my daughter to not tell anyone at school why she missed school on Wednesday, that it was a family thing and private. At work, I just felt comfortable explaining to my boss why I felt I had to miss a day at work. I really think this reaction of shame has to do with the immigrant experience. In my country, at least in my immediate reality there, if someone had their power shut off, you would think that they were so poor that they couldn’t even pay for that most abasic of basic utilities. And you don’t want to ever be that poor. I argued with Raul, I said, “But we are poor.” Of course, not so poor that we couldn’t pay for this service. I can be embarrassed by my oversight but I know we could have paid this bill had I not been so careless and distracted with that notice from CoServ. In places like my immediate reality in the “old country” poverty is a culture, so not paying your power bill, puts you even lower than low middle class. And no one wants to admit the possibility of this reality. So I decided to talk about it, because I’m not in the “old country.” I’m here. I really don’t know what mainstream U.S. of A. would imply from knowing that my power was interrupted, but Some Thing tells me it wouldn’t be as shaming as it would be in the “old country.”