Lucky.

The last song we danced to at our wedding was “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds. It’s an awkward love song, but the simple chorus keeps playing through my head these past few days:

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

On Saturday night, Hurricane Irene (a mere category 1 storm!) ripped through our neighborhood, literally. The damage is like nothing I have ever seen before, and something I hope to never see again. A large tree fell on our house, causing significant structural and water damage to four out of our nine rooms.

But we are so, so, so very lucky.

The tree hit with a loud boom that shook our entire house. My boys were asleep in their rooms upstairs, and my husband said he doesn’t think my feet touched a single step while I ran up to find them. The Finny Bo Binny remained blissfully asleep and unaware until we plucked him from his bed and brought him downstairs. The Tatiman, however, was cowering in a tent in his room, afraid we had been hit by a firework. I grabbed him and took him down stairs where we all—all four point five of us—sat together on a single chair. Huddling together, taking in what had just happened. I told the Tatiman “We are ok, because we are together.” He believed me, even though I wasn’t so sure I believed myself.

In the days since, we have learned how lucky we really are. We are lucky that the tree did not hit one of the boys rooms. We are lucky that our strongly built home held the tree from doing even more damage. We are lucky that we have an insurance company that has worked very hard to line up a team to fix the damage. We are lucky that we have lost very little of sentimental value, and our house can be rebuilt. We are lucky to have friends and family offering us food, temporary shelter, warm showers, babysitting, and anything else we could possibly imagine.

We are lucky because we still have each other.

No doubt. I am the luckiest.