My parents live and teach in Houston, so naturally I’ve been concerned about their well-being these past few days in the wake of Hurricane Ike’s devastation.  I talked to my dad briefly Saturday afternoon when Ike was barreling through Houston.  Over the cell phone connection I could hear the wind whistling and the rain pelting his windows.  The connection itself was crackly, as I’m sure the signal had trouble getting through the massive storm.  He gave me an update yesterday; he was at school to charge his cell phone and try to restore some semblance of normalcy to his life.  Their classes start up again on Thursday.  He still has no electricity.  In fact, I checked the power outages and he’s in an area that is still totally blacked out: 100% of CenterPoint customers in his zip code still are without electricity, as the chart illustrates.  Despite his troubles, it was good to hear from him and know he was at least safe and uninjured and that his place survived relatively unscathed.

On the other hand, I hadn’t heard from my mom since Friday morning.  I talked to her from school during the proverbial (and in this case very real) calm before the storm.  It was troubling, to say the least, not being able to talk her to check up on things.  I finally got a hold of my mom this evening.  Thankfully, she’s not hurt and her house is fine.  But, I could sense a little distress in her voice.  She said she’s never experienced anything like this power outage.  Houston’s got a curfew in effect, and she said it’s been disconcerting because, without street lamps or house lights anywhere, her area is “freaking pitch black at 8pm.”  Luckily, her friend came over and helped her fire up her grill (which hasn’t been used in quite a while) so that she can at least cook some rice and grill some fish.  Most of her food, however, is going to be thrown out.

It’s weird, but I wish I could be there to help my parents through it.  I mean, I’m glad I didn’t have live through Ike, but I a part of me feels guilty that I can’t help them.  The way I see it, I guess I just have to wait and hope and pray that electricity is restored sooner rather than later so that they can get their lives back on track.