The dark and stormy night drives horizontal hail against the windows like a berzerk banshee with handfuls of ball bearings. Wave after wave of ice pellets threaten to crack these sheets of silica shaking in the wind. In an effort to calm my mind, I think of hot sand melting to form this very glass. Vitrification is a process that has always fascinated me. I force my mind to consider this distraction.
As a child, it was a treat when my parents took me downtown to Olvera Street. The old plaza and shops lining the crazy cobblestones just west of Union Station were a great diversion from the stultifying frozen rage inside our house. On the west side of Olvera Street, there was a glass blower - who didn’t blow so much as he fashioned sailing ships, ballerinas, unicorns, dolphins and religious icons by holding slender glass rods in his deft hands before a white-hot flame. I would stand and watch ‘til the afterimage of that flame burned into my retina and persisted for several minutes as I was dragged away still sniffing after the scent of molten glass.
The detour of remembrance has worked. The storm has calmed a bit, and so has my anxiety. Rain still falls heavily, but the ice pellets are gone.
I’m alone in the house with my four year old and eight month old daughters and loyal old Fairfax Dog. The storm raging outside has flooded the street and I’m as electified as the scene lit up by the lightning - as I watch a tree going end-over-end down the middle of Benedict Canyon Drive - while the water is half-way up our driveway. Three cars that were parked on the street have been lifted by the flood waters and float downstream like toys. I’m frozen with shock. Will the river come up to the house? The street light is out, but I can see dim lights in the houses across from us.
Nine P.M. I hear the mantle clock strike. Thankful the girls are peacefully sleeping, I try the phone again. Still dead. They need me to make the right decision: Stay put or try to drive somewhere. By candle light, I check on them once more, then don my boots, grab the flash light and wade through the deluge at the top of the driveway, through the ivy between our house and the neighbor’s, dodge the off-pouring of their garage roof and bound onto their front porch. Their house is equally dark. My hope that their phone is working fades. I knock timidly at first then, with more urgent knuckles.
Ralph comes to the door and opens it a crack. I hold the flashlight so it illumines my face.
“Ralph! Sorry to bother you. Is your phone working? Ours is out. Mark is on his way home from LAX. I want to warn him not to drive up the street...”
"Come in, come in...”
Carol comes to the entry way as well. I leave my slicker and boots on the porch and squeeze past their huge arthritic German Shepherd. Blindly, he sniffs at my socks and wags his tail - panting moist clouds of doggie halitosis.
Eight year old Pam is still awake. I see her curled up on the couch. By the light of a flourescent camping lantern on the coffee table - she looks more fair-haired and fragile than she is. Karen must be asleep in her bed. Karen and my four year old are good buddies.
“Dan Enright put a car-phone in Mark’s Pontiac last week. I’m hoping I can reach him on the road. Your phone working?”
“Let’s see.” Ralph lifts the receiver. The sound of the dial tone from across the room warms my rigid body.
I blurt out the phone number.
He dials and gets a fast busy. My palms are sweaty.
A blue flash and thunder that stops our hearts and hurts our ears tells us the storm is moving fast.
“Gotta go - in case Mosa & Megan wake up... will you please try a couple more times?” I bolt to the door and put my boots and slicker on once more.
“Sure thing. Anything else you need?” Carol asks as she writes down the number.
“Just for the storm to stop scaring us, and PLEASE keep that big ol’ tree from falling over! Thanks, neighbors!”
I run back to our porch and listen just inside the door. All I hear is the rain on the roof, the roar of the river on what used to be our quiet street and deaf ol’ Fairfax shaking himself and jumping off the couch - trip, trip trapping on the hardwood floor.
I scratch his pointy head. Drying off with the towel left by the front door for muddy dog feet, I move down the hallway to reassure myself by flash-light that all is well with my lovelies. The sound of their soft breathing tears at my heart. How can something so magical as their very life’s breath make me feel so powerless to protect and preserve it?
Acts of God include one-hudred year old trees falling over in great storms such as this and onto unsuspecting dreamers asleep in their homes. My WILL is that the rain keeps UP so it doesn’t come DOWN any more this night! My will is that the tree be rooted all the way to the center of the earth and that it hold tightly to its branches. My will is that Mark have an easy return and that he can somehow pull up into the driveway without stalling out the engine; that he come home safely and help melt away this dark forboding that something awful will befall these beautiful daughters on my watch or ever.
I feel the mama wolf rise up inside me and know I will do ANYthing to protect my pups. I feel like biting something - hard. I open the dark refrigerator and rummage for the head of celery. Breaking off three pieces, I run them under the faucet and bite and bite and bite. I imagine my fangs gleaming in the flash of lightning.
Hot rage, like white-hot flame, liquifies and evaporates my frozen fear. Wish I'd known that trick when I was a child.
Lying down beside them, slowly I settle my breath to match my daughters' steady, even life-breath and wait.
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