Through the rain, he came

Those of us on the east coast were hammered all yesterday and late last night by rain.  It was unremitting and sometimes cruel—felling trees, swelling rivers, flooding homes—and all the while the wind whipped and through it all, my son was coming home.  He'd made the plans two weeks before.  He was to have arrived by 10 PM, the passenger in a friend's car.

I stayed at my desk, working, picking up his intermittent texts—we're near the tunnel, we're through the tunnel, we're close to the fifth exit—until finally a text announced the name of a neighboring town, and then at last he was home.  I don't think the kid has ever been hugged that hard.  I don't think he's ever looked that good.

What am I today, but grateful—to his friend, for driving intelligently; to the forces that be; to him.  Nothing we win or do or are promised in this life can matter like the people we so deeply love.