bagyong first world

It felt familiar, the lying awake in the middle of the night with the power out, the wind howling, the roof and the windows rattling. Except there were also the sounds of car alarms going off, and firefighter/police sirens down the street. There neither was rain nor mosquitoes, but still I couldn't sleep. All the noises startled me. And though I didn't need to worry about leaky roofs or the house flooding, I did worry about our magnolia tree being uprooted.

When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed that the world was ending. That Imo and I were trying to get to our kids, but that the land which we were on broke off from the rest of the Philippines (like the Philippines wasn't already made up of separate islands). Then there was a big flood, and somehow we found our kids, and we were holding each other's hands and we were sinking underwater. I remember the panic and then the calm.

I've had recurring dreams about water since I was a teenager: water overflowing (from toilets to tsunamis) and me drowning in it. And always, there is peace when I drown in my dream. Also, the dream was no surprise because a few nights ago, Imo and I saw Melancholia. He fell asleep in the middle of it; I was completely drawn in. That movie was so intense, I kept thinking about it for days. I would think about it even in the least likely of places, like in the parking lot of Yumi's preschool, at the sight of the gingko tree whose leaves had all turned yellow.

(Oh I hope last night's wind spared that gingko tree outside Yumi's classroom!)

I woke up to see that the power was back on. It was probably around 4 a.m. I turned out the lights and I fell back asleep, only to be woken up by the alarm on my phone, which had apparently already gone off thrice that morning (in 15-minute intervals) because when I looked it was already 7:48 a.m. and the kids were going to be late for school.



It was a mad scramble to get ready. There was no time for breakfast. The ground outside was covered with leaves and other tree parts. The magnolia tree was bald but it was still standing! Two trees had fallen on Beech Street and I had to take a detour. There were more leaves and branches and broken trees everywhere -- on the street and the sidewalk, on people's yards, hanging from electric wires. (Tree massacre, Joms called it.)



School would later be officially cancelled, but only after I ended up taking the kids back home with me anyway this morning. There was traffic and confusion in front of the school when we got there at 8:15, with teachers stopping cars to tell parents that officially school was open but that there was no electricity and water in the building; I decided to take my kids back home. Kat and Olivia came by (they had no electricity in their apartment). And we all hung out at our apartment (where luckily there was electricity), watched movies, had Dutch pancake for breakfast, and fried rice/leftovers/grilled cheese for lunch. Asha got to grind coffee beans in my new coffee mill (which would've been really useful had there still been no power).



I wondered about all the homes that still didn't have power and about all the cleanup that had to be done around the city. Kat said, This is the problem with living in a city so full of trees! And I said, Better flying branches than flying yero and billboards.

It's funny the things we forget we were used to.

It's funny the things that are the same. Such as Nacho rejoicing when he learned that school will be closed again tomorrow.