Answered Prayer

There was a terrible storm last night--rain pouring as if the floodgates of eternity had flown wide open, and crazy wind. Branches started falling all around the house, and the power went on, then out, then on again--over and over, until finally the house went dark. I lit hurricane lamps and got out candles as the wind whipped over and around the house. Mr. Strega slept on, oblivious to everything, having worked hard all day, and suddenly our dog indicated that he needed to go out. "Out" in our neighborhood means down a country lane, beneath tall trees, from which branches had been falling for the last hour. Plus, all the power was off in the neighborhood completely, and no moon, so it was pitch black. I tried to wake Mr. Strega, but he would not wake, just made himself a little more comfortable and pulled the blankets around his shoulders.

So, I put the leash on the dog and off we went, with my weak flashlight barely penetrating the darkness. It's incredible how something like a storm or even something as small as a streetlight going out can really alter a familiar landscape. The dog and I picked through fallen branches, and debris kept raining down. Finally, my flashlight failed and I took the dog back home, much to his consternation, as the purpose for which he had been brought out had not yet been achieved.

I got into the entryway of my house, trying to calm the dog, and said a prayer to my Higher Power that I might get some help in this situation. In less than five minutes, my seventeen-year-old son Riff tapped on the front door, back from a movie he'd gone to with friends. I let him in and said, "You're the answer to my prayer."

"Oh, really?" he said, in his dryly amused way. I told him the situation and he leashed the dog.

"I know where there's a mag light," he said, when I showed him the crappy flashlight I tried to use. I put back on hat, gloves, ancient Uggs that look like something from Lothar of the Hill People, and followed the canine and Riff out to Mr. Strega's car. The mag lite, with fresh batteries, was tucked under the seat.

"So that's where it went off to," I said.

Riff and I walked down the road again, kicking branches aside. "There's a huge one down at the end of the street," he said. "We should get it out of the way." We picked up moss-covered branches, branches still loaded with fresh greenery, bare branches, branches that looked sharpened at the end, and tossed and kicked them into the canyon beside the road, all the while joking about "branch-clearing aerobics." Finally we came to the widowmakers in the middle of the street and Riff did a bit of caber-tossing into the canyon, glad that we could spare someone having to get out of their car and move them. Our dog splashed in puddles and seemed inordinately happy to be out in the wild night, a night with no moon and bright stars that showed between torn-edged clouds. Riff asked me what "that fuzzy blue dot in the sky" was (he didn't have his glasses on), and I told him it was the Pleiades, and that next to it was Taurus, that the Pleiades are relatively new stars, as far as that goes, and that some of the stars in Taurus are very old.

I remembered something as I walked with Riff, a day when he was five and, as usual, our crummy car had broken down. There are two ways to get to my house from the bus: up a mountain, or around it. I had been walking uphill all week with him from the bus, and decided to take the long way around with him. It took us an hour to get home, but I had a nice chat with him, in his Dracula costume, as it was the day all the kids wore their Halloween costumes to school. Recently, my son told me that he had never been aware we didn't have much money when he was growing up--he had an old Playstation, and lots of toys, and every Friday, he got to go to the Felton library and pick out two movies for the weekend (I found out videos were free at the library).

"You made it seem so fun," he said about the Friday library trips.

Now that little guy is nearly eighteen years old, big enough to clear branches off the road, yet the child he was is still very much alive in his heart. As we headed back home, he said, "Hey, stop for a minute, Mom. I want to turn the flashlight out." He turned off the light and we were plunged into complete blackness, the trees around us a deeper darkness against a landscape of no light.

"Wow, can you imagine living like this all the time," he said in wonder. Then he made a comment about this being a perfect time for a UFO to show up, or perhaps a wandering alien.



"Just kidding," he said, and switched back on the flashlight as we walked up the driveway and into our house.