Downpour

I have just got the power back on, after being out for over 36 hours. We have experienced heavy rain, flooding, high winds, trees down, lighting, hail, the whole gamut of bad West Coast weather. There wasn't a utility candle left in all of Felton, it seems--I had to make do with Martha Stewart votives, scented like "shortbread" (actually, the scent is like waxy, perfumed butter). I even weathered the worst part of the storm all by myself, with nary but the family dog for company as the power went out, branches went sailing across the yard like javelins, and when I went out to get wood for the woodstove, found that the wheelbarrow (in which we keep our wood) was flooded and the firewood was bobbing about. I had one stick of dry firewood left, as well as kindling, and kept the house warm anyway, slowly drying the wet wood in the fireplace. The feeder creek to the pond down the road, usually so slow and meandering that it can barely be seen (so much so that I didn't even know it existed until 1997, though it runs in the canyon right below our house) , is whitewater right now.

All the while I was in the dark house, I got scared that my deceased mother would appear to me (sorry, when I'm in these dark woods, middle of nowhere, the rain pouring down, and nothing but candles to light the rooms, my imagination goes a little wild). But Mom came to me only in a dream last night, in my distant childhood home, and she was happily doing some small household chores--just in the time and place I remember her as being happiest.