Broken Glass

I have spent the last three days cleaning up glass. Millions of tiny shards of glass.

At 3am on Tuesday morning I woke with a start as a gush of wind that the weather man tells me was around 95 mph shook the entire house. Thunder clashed and lightening flashed. Then the wind hit again. That's when I heard the glass. It wasn't the crisp glass breaking sound of a baseball flying through a window. It was more like the crunching sound of a windshield of a car that's been in a wreck. It sounded like the glass was folding in on itself. Then the wind hit again and all of those tiny broken shards started swirling around hitting the windows and walls. All three kids came running down the stairs. The girls were screaming. Chris thought we were in a tornado and I have to admit I did too. I turned on the TV hoping the weatherman would tell me what was going on. The four of us and the cat sat huddled at the foot of my bed for an hour, jumping out of our skin each time another gust hit the house. I thought there was a good chance we were about to lose the roof. Around 5am the rain came and ushered out the storm. The wind calmed and it was just soft rain falling all around us. We all finally drifted off into an exhausted sleep.

When we opened the door the next morning glass came with it. Our entire storm door had shattered. Glass was everywhere, including lodged into the walls of the house. So were tree limbs and soccer balls and trash. It was a mess. I'm actually grateful though. Friends had it much worse. Huge oak trees uprooted and fell on houses and cars. Fallen power lines and debris laid across the roads for hours, blocking travel until most people just turned around and went back home. Some people are still without power. I just have a little (well a lot) of broken glass.

Although, we'll all be alright with not going through another night like that for a very long time.