Nochebuena

"Fire!" yelled my father-in-law from the living room, and my husband, his mother and I rushed in from the dining area to find him shrouded in dark, acrid-smelling smoke, while the outlet behind the television spattered and sputtered as sparks flew helter skelter, raising the specter of an electric fire in their small cabin on the Eve of Christmas Eve.

Prior to that, the lights had been inexplicably flickering on and off. At one point, while I was sitting alone in the large sitting room grading papers on my laptop, the overhead light brightened to a neon-whiteness and the small, zen-like water feature that my mother-in-law keeps on a table near the comfortably over sized chairs, started sounding more like a miniature Niagara Falls. All in all, not a good sign, I thought, so I turned off and unplugged my laptop and my husband and I later began to exchange theories for why the lights were acting so strangely.

"Poltergeist!" my husband suggested, and I asked my mother-in-law whether their cabin was built atop an old indigenous grave site.

"Not that I know of, but there was a coal mine here," she ventured, adding that the lights had been flickering strangely for a few months now but the electric company hadn't deigned to come investigate and their electrician friend had said the problem was not with the cabin's wiring. "Tonight might just be the night that they finally blow out," she predicted.

Said and done. A few minutes later, as we sat at the table to enjoy some Mexican take-out from a nearby restaurant that my husband's parents patronize every time we visit, the light overheard fizzed and hissed and blew out as the refrigerator made loud groaning noises, like a sinking Titanic. That's when my father-in-law ran into the living room to find the surge protector exploding and a small fire developing behind the television.

"I'm going to turn off the electricity!" he said while I rushed my mother-in-law, who's terribly allergic to the compounds produced by anything that burns, into the other room, closing doors behind us. My husband and father-in-law got everything under control and we were able to get in touch with the electrician, who said this sounded like a surge problem with the electricity coming into the house. We called the electric company and, although the supervisor who eventually got on the phone said they likely would not come that night because they still had tens of thousands of people without lights in West Virginia due to the recent snow storm, he actually showed up near 11 p.m. and, after surveying the damage, promised a crew would be there early the next morning.

Thanks to a gasoline-powered generator my parents-in-law keep for just such occasions when there are blackouts, we were able to have heat and I slept pretty well after a rather eventful and tense evening. But my poor husband couldn't sleep and kept waking up, listening for any possible problem with the generator. But all was quiet and we left early this morning when the electric crew arrived and said the road would be closed for a while so they could cut branches and trees and clear the way for the main line into the house, which seemed to have been the culprit of all the previous night's adventures.

From West Virginia, we drove back into Ohio for our Christmas Eve tradition: lunch at Roscoe Village, a recreation of a 19th-century canal town, which is not far from my small college on the hill.

Now, safe and sound at home, while Pepper and Lizzy romp and chase each other in the yard, my husband has made a weak batch of coquito (just as I like it) to celebrate the Nochebuena (such a lovely word) with, the tiny little tree is all lit up with our presents underneath, and Christmas music plays on the radio. All is well that ends well, I'd say.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!