I was probably about seven, we were living on the Eastern Shore, and it was past my bedtime. I was dead asleep in bed, and then my mother shook me awake. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled at her beckoning out to the Upper Porch, and stared at the beautiful nightmare through the windows. It was a hurricane, Alberto or Gilbert or Keith... maybe Joan. The rain pounded sideways and the trees bent their top branches to the ground. It was weird, but I still couldn't understand why I had had to drag my tired little body out of bed.
"Isn't this amazing, Ray?" my mother said.
Yes, I guessed that it probably was, or at least would be if my brain would stop buzzing and my eyelids would stop being so terribly heavy.
"Your grandmum woke me up one night when I was about your age to see a hurricane just like this," my mother said.
When she said that, suddenly -- everything was clear. I blinked my eyes and stopped being confused. I realized that I was a part of a pattern, part of the excitement.
By being a witness to the storm, I was an integral part of it.
I felt crucial, and loved.
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