I’m writing this column a few days before Thanksgiving, on a bright and glorious fall day.

There’s a little excitement in the air, as we prepare to take the train to Washington D.C. to have a traditional Thanksgiving meal with our extended family. We are eager for the trip, as this is a year we are especially aware of how much we have to be thankful for.

It’s cool outside, but I’m using a computer in a warm, well-lit room in lower Manhattan. The steam is hissing in the radiators. The refrigerator is humming, and I hear the low growl of a garbage truck outside compacting our building’s trash. Yesterday, I made a phone call to the pharmacy across the street to renew a prescription for a drug that helps me with my neuropathy; it’s ready to be picked up.

Electricity, steam heat, telephones, computers, access to pharmacies, garbage pick-ups -- these are wonderful things that make life comfortable on a daily basis. Thanksgiving is a great time to take stock of the conveniences and bounty that surround us.

Less than four weeks ago, all of the comforts and amenities I just mentioned were abruptly interrupted.

On Monday, October 29, Hurricane Sandy arrived in New York City. Electricity, heat, and telephone service went down. So did the subway, the mail, package and newspaper deliveries.

Manhattan isn't well known for being subject to much weather. True, after thunderstorms, puddles have to be jumped at curbs. Umbrellas have to be regularly replaced because they are being destroyed by the wind gusts that build as wind tunnels between skyscrapers. But trees don’t fell electric and telephone lines in Manhattan; utility companies were required to place their lines underground over 100 years ago in response to the disarray caused by the great March blizzard of 1888. And snow is usually plowed quickly and rarely disrupts the transit system.

Hurricane Sandy was a reminder that even the arrogant and mighty Gotham can be shaken to its roots by an act of nature.

Sandy passed through the City quite quickly, in less than 24 hours. However, four of the five counties that make up New York City are located on islands. The huge tidal surge accompanying Sandy wreaked utter havoc on the low-lying areas of the City and the low-lying areas around it.

On the Monday morning, before the storm arrived in full force, I walked over to the Hudson River to look at the first of the two high tides that would occur that day.

The scene at the river was quite extraordinary. Two blocks to the west of the building we live in, the Hudson was at least five feet higher than I had ever seen it. Water was lapping at the edge of the concrete bulkhead that separates the pedestrian path from the river. Neither the path nor the highway that runs alongside the Hudson were flooding then, but they surely would if the next high tide, which was scheduled for 9 p.m. that evening, was to rise another eight or ten feet, as forecasters were predicting.

The neighborhood was eerily empty. There were only a few cars on the highway and a few people walking their dogs. The wind was picking up, and I decided to head home.

By early afternoon, the wind was shrilly whining as it rushed through the skyscraper projects under construction to the south of us. We looked out the window and saw a few intrepid (or foolish) drivers making their way uptown with the rain lashing at their windshields.

Around 5 p.m., we received a computer-generated telephone call that our electric power might be preemptively cut in order to protect the local electric distribution system. We were grateful for the advance notice - you wouldn't want to be caught in an elevator when the power goes out.

We cooked dinner and were sitting around the table when the lights flickered at around 9 p.m. They flickered a couple more times, dimmed, and then went out. The telephones stopped working as well. Lower Manhattan plunged into darkness.

We lit candles and brought out two songbooks and some musical instruments. Our older son and his girlfriend, who were visiting for the weekend, are both music teachers. Our younger son is banjo player and singer as well. My wife and I joined the three of them in singing folk songs and spirituals. In the three hours we sang, I don't think we made a dent in their repertoire.

Around midnight, we turned off all cell phones to conserve their batteries; reception was weak and intermittent anyway, and we wanted to conserve what power the phones had.

At that time, the wind and rain had died down. We got our flashlights and walked up six flights through a pitch-black stairwell to our roof.

Lower Manhattan was very dark. Other than the construction lights on the floors of the unfinished World Trade Tower, we could see only one building – a new two million square foot skyscraper three blocks to the south - with lights on. I assumed that this large Wall Street firm had its own generator. I later learned that this building, and a few of its neighbors, got electric power from an underground cable that ran to Brooklyn.

Tuesday when we awoke the storm was over, but power had not returned. I put batteries in an old transistor radio and learned that power to lower Manhattan was going to be out for a significant period of time.

The storm surge had been as high as predicted: the highways in lower Manhattan had flooded with three to four feet of water. The damage to the City’s infrastructure was enormous: not only were thousands of buildings without power, many of their basements had flooded, damaging or destroying their electric systems.

Far worse, we learned that fires had broken out in a waterfront neighborhood of Brooklyn and over a hundred homes had been destroyed. Many hundreds if not thousands of other homes in New York and New Jersey were utterly destroyed by the wind and the water. When we saw videos and photos of these neighborhoods a few days later, they looked similar to neighborhoods devastated by tornadoes.

In Manhattan, a major utility substation had short-circuited when it flooded. The flash was visible from miles away. Electric power was out south of 34th Street. Repairs would take many days if not weeks. Traffic signals and subways were not working, and the tunnels connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn and New Jersey had flooded.

While our 19th century, six-story apartment building had lost heat and power, the basement was dry and water continued to flow into our kitchen and bathrooms. The gas stove worked, so we could heat water and cook.

Many of our neighbors were not so lucky. The high-rise buildings over ten stories had no water at all. Their water pipes are serviced by a tank at the top of the buildings, and since the tank is fed by a pump that runs on electricity, the tank and the buildings had run dry. Water would not be restored until the electricity returned.

Tuesday evening, my wife and I played Scrabble by candlelight. I turned on my cell phone and listened to a message that said that if I could get uptown the next morning, I could have my monthly blood tests and get a scheduled infusion.

Wednesday morning, I decided to hazard a Manhattan without subways or traffic lights. I gathered up my laptop computer, my cell phone, and the chargers, and I went outside to see if I could find a taxi. Much to my surprise, taxi drivers were running as jitneys, picking up passengers going in the same direction. When I held up my arm in the familiar New York taxi hail, a yellow cab promptly stopped. Traffic lights were working north of 34th street, and the trip to the medical center took less time than it usually takes by mass transit.

The medical center seemed to be functioning normally. After my blood tests and infusion were complete, I grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant

Uptown Manhattan was in a very different state from downtown. Sandy did not seem to have disrupted daily life uptown at all other than massive amounts of drivers trying to cope with the absence of a transit system. Since Central Park was closed because of the danger of falling tree limbs, I took a very slow bus ride down Fifth Avenue, and walked the last couple of miles when the driver turned east. I was glad to see that police were now directing traffic at the busy intersections with no traffic signals.

While I was getting my infusion, my wife had biked over to the complex of hospital buildings where she works.

When she got home she had bad news to report. Both New York University and Bellevue Hospitals, with over 2,000 beds between them, had flooded and lost power. The residents, the staff, and the National Guard had first carried fuel by hand to the roof to power the generators and then helped evacuate patients by carrying them down the darkened stairs when the backup generators failed. Only four patients remained in the pediatric intensive care unit, and they were soon to be transferred.

We have since learned that these hospitals will not be admitting patients again until February, at the earliest. The Veterans Administration hospital, which is located just to the south of Bellevue, flooded and is closed as well.

By Thursday, the temperature in our apartment had dropped. By this time, three days after the lights went out, we really wanted a hot shower. Moreover, the uncertainty of when the power would return was unnerving. We accepted the invitation of friends who live uptown to move in with them until our heat and power returned.

Much to our amazement, when we awoke Saturday morning in our friends’ apartment, they told us that electricity somehow had been restored to most buildings in lower Manhattan. In addition, the employees of the City’s public transportation system had used specially equipped diesel powered trains to pump water out of most of its tunnels. Partial subway service was being restored.

We said goodbye to our friends and returned home. Utility workers from as far away as Michigan and Arkansas were crawling over the streets repairing the storm’s damage.

On the Monday one week to the day after the storm, the pharmacy across the street re-opened. So did one of the local grocery stores, whose workers were restocking the shelves.

Through the efforts of many, life returned to normal for our immediate neighborhood less than two weeks after Hurricane Sandy passed through.

It took – and will take – far longer for others who live in the storm’s path. Thousands of public housing tenants were without water, power, and elevator service for up to three weeks. Many apartment and office buildings downtown will not re-open for months. And many people live in beachfront houses that have been damaged beyond repair.

When I speak a few words of thanks at my sister’s Thanksgiving table this year, I don’t know if I will be able to do so without choking up with emotion.

As others have noted, overcoming challenge is a tonic for the soul. The relatively brief deprivations of Sandy and the health challenges that I faced and survived this past year have heightened my awareness of the good fortune I have.

Simply put, I am so grateful for all the people, those I know and those I don’t know, who helped me get through the extraordinary challenges of this past year.

And I am grateful for each of the days that I’ve been granted to experience in these extraordinary times.

Happy Thanksgiving!