My first instinct this morning was to go to the west windows and take a look at the church.  Is it still intact?  And what about all the Monterey Cypress trees up the street?  Was there any damage at our house?  Are all the pictures still on the walls and the dishes safe in the cupboards?

None of these questions come from a place of logic.  Not really.  They are more visceral than intellectual – they feel instinctive.  Almost primal.  That’s what happens when you are wakened by a thunderclap so loud that your bed actually bounces from the reverberation.  Eleven by the clock and out of a sound sleep.

Our Stairwell

Nyel was already awake, thanks to the diuretics he takes.  In fact, he was awake when the skies lit up like midday immediately before the roar of the clashing clouds – and for several more just like them.  His wakefulness is a ‘usual’ condition caused by the diuretics he must take.  (And as several of his hospital nurses have noted, he’s a ‘night pee-er.’  Which, when you think about it, is better than the alternative if you want any kind of daytime normalcy…) So, he was able to report that we seemed to be at the epicenter of last night’s storm.  Not ‘we’ as in Oysterville.  ‘We’ as in this very household.

Church and Steeple

Thankfully, I slept through most of it.  It’s not that I am afraid of thunder and lightning.  Not exactly.  But, one of the last years I was teaching at Long Beach School, my class and I witnessed a lightning strike on the house across the alley.  Immediately, smoke rose from the roof and the power went off at the school (and throughout the neighborhood, we learned later.)  I sent one of the kids to the office to ‘report’ what we’d seen, the fire department was called, the school went into Fire Drill mode and my first/second/third graders felt like heroes.

As always in situations like that, I was left with thoughts of how ephemeral safety is.  How things can change in a second.  Without warning.  With a strike of lightening and a clap of thunder.  And, though I slept through most of the storm last night, those few jarring, wakeful moments have left me a little bit jangled.  I’m still waiting for first light to see if all is well in the village.