The Awakening I opened my eyes Saturday morning and realized something wasn't right. First of all, it was still dark. Very dark. Which means I shouldn’t be awake yet. Then I heard a loud bump. I looked over at David’ side of the bed. Empty. "Honey?" "Yeah," he called from downstairs. "What was that?" "Oh, just me falling down the stairs." He snickered a little. I couldn't resist a little laugh in return. If you can’t laugh at your spouse, who can you laugh at? But I was concerned, so I gave him an "Are you OK?" "Yeah, but the power is off." My stomach sank a little. Then I heard the computer beeping, which it does when the power is out. It's some contraption that cost extra, of course. But that’s another entry titled “We are Suckers.” David stopped the beeping, grabbed a flashlight and came back to bed. "What were you doing up, anyway? Are you sure you're OK? Did you fall down the stairs?" "That beeping woke me up. It penetrated my dream. Then when I woke up, I thought I was still dreaming. I'm OK. I just missed the last step.” See? Things do go bump in the night. I just didn’t know my husband was the cause of it. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I wonder what made the power go out. What time is it anyway?” He said it was 4:30, we talked a few minutes, then I found myself wide awake. At 4:30 a.m. and with no power. I started to worry. When would it come back on? We better not open the fridge or freezer. I hope all the food doesn’t go bad. We’d gotten through Hurricane Isabel without losing power and now for some inexplicable reason, we’d lost it on some random Saturday morning? The irony was not lost on me. And the other irony was that I couldn’t sleep because we didn’t have power. The darkness, so still and so… dark was disturbing. Then I realized this is exactly what my mom did when I lived at home. Every time it would storm she’d say, “I hope we don’t lose any trees.” Not once did a tree fall. Not once. I don’t say that when it storms or rains, but I do get a slight panicky feeling like I left something outside. A few minutes later, everything around us sizzled to life including the neighbor’s spotlight that shines right into our bedroom window. It was on for a minute, then went off. We checked the alarm and I finally could go back to sleep knowing the clock would go off when it was supposed to and the food in the fridge and freezer wouldn’t thaw and/or spoil.