Let's not do that again...

"Brian?" I whispered into the quiet darkness. We had already said goodnight and the stillness from his side suggested that his mind had already started to drift into sleep. But my mind was not quite settled.
"Hmmm?" His tone was gentle.
"I'm glad you didn't die today."
"Me too," he said after a slight pause. "I'm home, safe and sound. And we had good burgers tonight."
A small laugh escaped through the lump in my throat and I closed my eyes to fight off the stinging tears. It worked pretty well...only one of them escaped and landed on my pillow.



Tornadoes swept through Raleigh yesterday. There are three confirmed deaths so far (just in Raleigh), and many damaged houses and buildings...including the leveling of a Lowes home improvement store just outside the city.

Brian and Carson were 5 meager miles away, stopped in the minivan watching a 2 foot deep river rush down the road they intended to cross. Several compact cars had tried to cross and were sitting in the middle of the river, stuck. "Linds! I've never seen anything like this!" Brian said over the phone, "This is crazy!" Carson called a few minutes later. "Mom, dere was dis guy, and he was stuck in his car, and a big twuck came up, and the man got out of his twuck with a rope, and den the man in his car got out of his car and he was only wearing his socks! Den the twuck pulled and pulled and got all the cars out of the water!"

Clearly they were having a good time.

Meanwhile, I was sitting home watching the news and listening to the announcers say, "You need to seek shelter!" "Do not go into downtown Raleigh right now! If you are listening to us on the radio and are headed for downtown Raleigh, pull off the side of the road immediately! Do not go into downtown Raleigh! We are seeing very dangerous signs that a deadly tornado is forming!" "We cannot stress enough how dangerous we feel this situation is!" The predicted path had the storm passing through downtown Raleigh and then continuing northeast. Brian and Carson were in northwest Raleigh - out of the predicted path by a few miles. This calmed Brian's fears and gave him encouragement that he could finish his errands. But it didn't calm my fears - - - they were still much too close to it for my comfort and I kept asking him to turn around and come home. Thankfully, the storm followed the predicted path, causing the casualties 5 miles east of my life.

I'm trying not to entertain the what-ifs. But my heart went through an emotional roller-coaster yesterday and I realized, once again, how much I love and how tightly I am bound to that man.

And, my Carson, oh!

- I think I'll stop thinking about it now...