Unexpected Christmas Gift

Sometimes the Christmas gift you get is not the one you expected. Sometimes it is better. On December 18, a big storm hit Maine. Power loss, damage, and flooding to rival 1936, it was an epic Maine storm. My lake began flooding, as the Androscoggin River backed into it.

Worse things lay ahead, not seen in a lifetime. As wind subsided, water rose. Six lakes flowed down from above, the river pushed water into the lake from below.

What had been skateable was now water. The lake began swallowing shoreline trees, crept ten feet from shore, then fifty, then two hundred, rose ten vertical feet.

Living on a peninsula, the lake now approached my home in front, from both sides, then gradually from behind, until there was no more road, no driveway, and no way out.

My car sat on the lowest level of the house, two levels overhead, but on that lowest also sat the furnace, heat pump, oil tanks, washer, drier, immovable belongings. I suddenly was an island.

As the 18^th became 19^th, 19^th became 20^th, temperatures began to fall – below freezing. Lake water kept rising, each morning fringed with ice, but higher. Sticks to mark high water around the house, built on a mound, were gone by morning.

That was the status December 21^st, as water around the house began pushing higher on the mound, flowed under my front deck, crept toward the heat pump, and walked its way toward my garage door, until the lake was a handful of feet away.

For four days, then into the fifth, the only guarantee against freezing was a generator, five feet off the ground beside the propane tank, recently filled but also surrounded by water – and the furnace in my basement, keeping the home warm.

Every time I checked the water’s height, it was higher. Every time I convinced myself it had stopped rising, it rose. Only prayer and wishful thinking kept sanity.

The generator throbbed, furnace groaned, and heat filled the house, no other noises, no more high winds, roaring trees, flying branches, or big waves.

Internally, my mind flooded. Why were sandbags not at my disposal, why did that precaution not ever occur to me? Why leave the car in the garage when it could have been driven to high ground earlier? Why did a flood seem unrealistic, until it was real? What if the generator quit, propane or oil ran out, furnace got flooded?

What if…and then I remembered Christmas was coming, good things lay ahead, life was full, not all worry. I laughed at myself, lake half empty, like glass half full.

Night of the 21^st, a few silent nights before the Silent Night, temps fell to 18 degrees, water stayed, refused to retreat, surrounded the house, but things were still dry.

The dogs now got uneasy. How did they know? Let out, they roamed our little island, littler than the day before, not at all like the world they were used to.

By morning of 22^nd, enchantment of being an island had worn off, this adventure nowhere near as fun as it had been when it started.

Still, the lake had a mind of its own, seeming to rise then fall, wind picking it up a bit, then returning it like a flat sentry, guarding our little prison, our exit refused.

I did have a canoe, if worse came to worse, but that seemed extreme, until needed. That would mean the car and piping were done, not the story’s end my mind wanted. 

By mid-morning the 22^nd, still no power, little retreat of the water, things seemed a bit like Robinson Crusoe, only with icy shores and pine needles not warm sand.

Funny how fond you can get of a generator’s purr, how admiring of its consistency, how tired of seeing water everywhere.

I thought of Noah searching his dove, Louis XV glibly warning “After me, the flood.” I would settle for a chickadee. Apparently Louis the XV had my lake in mind. December 23^rd, still no power.

Then, suddenly, almost as suddenly as it had come, the flood began to retreat, running from the sides of my house back into the lakebed, leaving happy clutter.

The operational word is happy, because by some miracle, some remarkable, unthinkable, unexplainable, pray-fulfilling, chickadee-returning, curse breaking turn, my house, furnace, car, and basement did not flood.

By some wonder, the generator did not faulter, propane and oil not run out, and electricity did return – just in time, for a big Christmas “thank you.” Unexpected gifts are the best, and 2023’s yuletide will be long remembered – as warm and dry.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.