For a long time, I thought I was a flexible person. I loved going new places, trying new foods, and meeting new people.

As time has passed, I have realized I am not that flexible.

I could eat the same thing for every breakfast and lunch with very little variety, and not mind at all. When I download a new song, before adding it to a playlist, I’ll often play it on a loop without fully realizing it has been playing for half an hour before someone mentions it to me. When I read The Curated Closet (not an affiliate link, I just want you to be able to find out more about the books in this post!) this past year, it was totally freeing to own the fact that I have seasonal uniforms, and I now wear them more than ever.

My parents have a binder of all the family Christmas letters over the years, and this past Christmas my daughter was reading the one I wrote when I was about nine. In the paragraph I wrote about myself, the first sentence went something like, “I like to read, draw, and spend time by myself.” Not much has changed since then, although drawing has become a range of creative outlets, like sewing and crafting.

At times, I feel bad that I am not more flexible. Most of my days are laid out in the same way. The routine has become a survival mechanism in a life that can feel a bit like black ice with all the moving parts.

One night this week in Tobago, after a grey day of heavy rain, we lost power for a couple of hours. I had been tooling around on my devices for most of the day. Even though I wanted to be reading, I couldn’t quite pull myself away from the screens.

I’m in the middle of a good book, Ghosts of Greenglass House, by Kate Milford. (As it turns out, this is the second book in a series, something I’ve suspected since I started it but didn’t confirm until now. Unfortunately, I can’t get the first book in hand till we get back, so I’ll keep reading and treat book 1, Greenglass House, as a prequel when I get home.)

When I read a book, I want to allow myself to get sucked in. Every time I pick this one up, the natural sound of the dialogue and delicious descriptions make me smile. I am savoring it. I want to read it without being interrupted. That was my plan for at least part of the evening.

It was starting to get dark when the power went out.

We all gathered upstairs in the Big House of The Compound because it had the best of the fading light.

The kids were antsy. We were laughing, talking, and gradually as it got dark, there was some dancing and singing. Time stretched out as we hung in limbo.

With no power, the pumps to the water tanks don’t work, and in Tobago, there is a solid 12 hours of daylight and darkness each, so we were possibly looking at a long, sticky night if the power didn’t come back, with no way to bathe and limited options for entertainment.

Someone opened the windows to let in the sea breeze. We sat together in the growing darkness, with my book sitting needlessly nearby. We had just finished a round of ”Kumbaya” when the power came back on after about two hours.

It was so refreshing to be freed from everything and just hang out together. In a perfect world I might spend most of my time alone in a dimly lit, soft corner with a good book, a glass of cold water, and a snack instead of the unstructured family time I got instead.

Unexpectedly, being forced to be flexible made the evening a breath of fresh air and a treasured memory.

If you’re interested in more book recommendations, check out my Pinterest board here. I hope to talk a little more about the Curated Closet process in a future post or two.