We are okay...

The storm raged, and it ranted. It spit words I've never heard, and then some. But we emerged with only an unhinged fence. Driving around the neighborhood last Tuesday, we were amazed at the damage. Garage doors looked like pages from a frustrated novelist crumpled in a garbage can. Some of the trees we love stayed, but others looked like they'd been snapped in a moment of rage. On the radio, they described scenes of destruction. We sat in the dark, unable to go investigate. We were put on a curfew. We didn't dare go beyond our neighborhood. After the power went out on Monday, the heat began to rise. We opened the windows, but before long, the shelves of books and stacks of paper in our house began to buckle. We went outside. We talked to neighbors. Some were grilling some pork tenderloin that might be lost otherwise, and they invited us to come and eat with them. When we got there, several of our neighbors sat around the table, and we got to know them. We dragged chairs to the front porch and, with hurricane breezes still going strong, we laughed and talked about how this is how neighborhoods are supposed to be.

The nights were rough. But they were also sweet. We laid in our living room with all of the windows open and made shadow animals in the flashlight's enormous circle. Ryan got a kick out of that. I read my novel under a candlelight's flicker and tasted each word. You read much slower by candlelight.

Coffee was a big issue. David was determined to brew some cold drip. It was Chinese torture for him, watching each thick, globular, aromatic condensation of coffee land in the glass pitcher. Our neighbor has a gas stove, so after two hours, when we had a good bit of the brew, we toted our pitcher to their house for hot water. We sat out on the porch and talked and drank what is possibly the most delightful cup of joe I've ever had.

After a few days, though, the kids got desperate. Charlotte sported a constant ringlet hairdo from the humidity and her brow was sweaty. Ryan kept melting down. When David's sister returned to Diamondhead, Mississippi and invited us to her air conditioning, we couldn't pack fast enough.

We got back today, and our house was air conditioned and light. Not so for the rest of Baton Rouge, much of which will be without power for weeks. People are starting to get antsy and aggressive. Officials have banned alcohol sales, saying that it just makes things worse. And if you're not inside by 10 o' clock, you will be questioned. Grocery stores have limited supplies, so we shopped in Mississippi and stocked up.

Now, Hurricane Ike is brewing in the Atlantic, and is due to come somewhere near. We hope it doesn't. We can't even imagine going through this again so soon.