The Generator

As Hurricane Helene carved a path through the heart of South and East Georgia, she left behind a legacy of uprooted trees and power lines that bowed in surrender, plunging Peach State communities into an abyss of darkness and quiet. Hours later, a chorus of chainsaws clearing the aftermath emerged over the silent morning, but another sound brought music to our ears — the hum of generators.

On Friday afternoon, two heroes (my nephew, Alex, and his fiancé, Addison) slowly made their way from North Carolina to my mother’s Ohoopee home. They found Mom physically unhurt, but shaken from the trauma of the storm. Alex dusted off an old generator stored in my late stepfather’s shop and cranked it. It chugged to life, bringing power — beautiful power — to her refrigerator and freezers and allowing her to save peas and green beans that Mom and my stepfather, Johnny, had grown and packed in freezer bags over the last decade. Another cable allowed her to make coffee when she needed caffeine, plug up the Starlink to get to the Internet, or power the television.

My sister arrived on Saturday with her souped-up traveling van, making it possible to cook simple meals and cool off in the air conditioning. I arrived on Tuesday to find my brother in the backyard connecting Mom’s well pump to the generator, which allowed us to run water, flush and even take cold showers.

For the next week, we danced with the generator — shuffling extension cords, plugging, unplugging, filling the gas tank, and yanking the pull cord until our shoulders and arms were sore, all the while whispering our thank yous to the loud machine on the back patio. This gas-powered guardian of the modern age became our lifeline — a testament to human ingenuity and foresight.

This week, these machines have performed important duties — preserving contents of freezers stocked with the summer’s bounty, keeping the lights on to read by, and charging mobile phones to provide a vital link to the outside world. Generators stood staunch against the storm’s attempt to unseat our daily rhythms.

“I think we all forget how much we’ve come to depend on power, water and phones,” I said last week. “We are spoiled with these modernday conveniences. It’s like we’ve been camping for a week — and we had a generator to help us. Some folks didn’t have anything to generate a single line of electricity.”

Each evening, I stood at the front of Mom’s house and looked around to see if I could see a light anywhere in her community, but there were none illuminating anyone’s porches. During daylight hours, we sat on the porch and watched hundreds of power utility trucks drive by — a welcome sight.

When Mom’s power was resurrected a week after Helene, light filled the kitchen, and she and I squealed with delight. That first warm shower was pure ecstasy. We washed our hair and smiled at each other with towels wrapped around our heads like turbans, rocking in her two recliners. We had experienced the quiet miracle of coming home — home to an era we’d never left but somehow forgotten in the matter of a week.

Our gratitude is too deep for words — for the many people who have helped us and our community, for the generator, for the eventual restoration of power and water, and most of all, for the caring and concern of friends and loved ones. Often when something is lost, even momentarily, we learn to truly cherish its presence and the real things in life. That has certainly been the case this week.

As for the generator, we’ve stowed it back in its place so that it can rest after a hectic week.

“Go to sleep, my generator friend,” I said as I turned off the light and locked the door. “We hope we don’t see you again for a long time, but if we need you again, thank God you’re here.”