I count myself fortunate that I can sleep through anything. I have successfully slept through emotional crises and societal trauma, and over 20 years ago I slept through Hurricane Andrew.
Once the evacuation order came through, I went to my mom’s house since she lived alone in Oakland Park with only her big dog, Lucas. I needn’t have worried about her being alone: her house was filling up quickly. My younger brother’s psycho wife chose that day to kick him out, so, depressed, he showed up with his dog, Max. My middle sister and her boyfriend fled their condo on the beach with their dog, Charlie. My boss evacuated from Lighthouse Point with her girlfriend and their cat.
It was going to be a long night: My sister’s boyfriend and my boss hated each other. I detested my boss’s girlfriend and all three dogs hated the cat. My sister and brother had already exchanged sharp words about his psycho wife, and my mother, who hated thunderstorms, let alone a hurricane, was nearly paralyzed with fear. Lucas, whose fear of storms was even worse than Mom’s was glued to her side, hyperventilating and drooling.
Keeping 7 adults, three dogs and a cat in the same room was not a good idea, so I separated everyone: My mother and Lucas took the master bedroom. My sister, her boyfriend and Charlie took the middle bedroom. My boss, her girlfriend and the cat took my old bedroom. This left my brother, Max and me in the living room which had picture windows on three sides; none of the windows had shutters.
As night fell and the storm got worse, things got exciting. The cat, agitated, began to wail. This caused the dogs to howl which made the cat wail louder. My boss and my sister’s boyfriend were screaming at each other through closed doors to keep their respective pets quiet. My mother and Lucas, who both got gassy when they were nervous, were in their room and Lucas, all 80 pounds of him, was on Mom’s lap. I opened the door to check on them and almost passed out. “Please light a candle,” Mom said with dignity; “in case we lose power.”
Remarkably, we still had power at midnight but with the wind, rain and thunder, the barking dogs, the wailing cat and the screaming adults, it was pretty noisy. Undaunted, I laid down on the sofa, said “good night,” to my brother and closed my eyes. Then the power went out.
My brother had a flashlight that had the intensity of a locomotive’s headlight; he aimed it at me now. “What are you doing?” he said, “You can’t sleep under a picture window.” “Watch me,” I said, closing my eyes, I thought, with finality.
My brother aimed the flashlight at me again. “You’re going to be cut to ribbons when that window shatters,” he said with satisfaction. “Good,” I said, putting my head under a pillow, “I hope it punctures my jugular so I can get some peace and quiet.” And I fell asleep.
When my brother woke me at 6 the next morning the storm was over. We lost a couple of tree limbs, and my mother’s ancient fence blew down, but that was it. The electricity was already back on, but we had no cable TV, so we had no idea, yet, what had happened in Homestead.
Our little party of survivors, puffy-eyed and swollen from lack of sleep, was not pretty. “He slept through it,” my brother told everyone as mom made toast and served coffee. “He slept under the picture window.”
An hour later I was ready to go home. “What’s the rush?” asked my mother. I yawned. “It’s early,” I said; “I’m going back to bed.”