Cyclone Basyang Part 1: Breakdancing

The day started pleasantly enough with a quickie catchup lunch with my girlfriend M. I read somewhere that we were going to be hit by a cyclone but I didn't pay much attention to it. When the rains didn't let up in the afternoon, I started getting a bit concerned. When the power went out at night, I started getting worried. When the winds roared, I started freaking out.

You see, our house is surrounded by trees, something that I've always liked. There's a slim, ancient, insides-eaten-out tree in front of our home, which has seen many a howling storm. We also have a malunggay tree on one side; and other trees from our neighbors' yards skimming over our rooftop.

These trees, they all look so lovely but when the winds howled, they started breakdancing like mad, their branches pounding our roof, making loud clickity-clackity sounds. When the clickity sounds got louder around my sons' room, I woke them up and told them to sleep in the living room. I thought of calling my sister B and asking her husband B to pick us up, but then we'd be traveling with branches and iron sheets flying around, which would be even more dangerous. The winds bellowed even louder, and now, the tree in our front yard was rapping its branches on our water tank while the malunggay kept tapping our roof. It was crazy. I opened one of our windows and I could see the ancient tree, making like a Chinese acrobat, stretching up and out.

It was at this point that I saw a man standing outside our gate. And because it was dark and raining and I was freaking out, the scene sort of reminded me of The Strangers. Immediately, I grabbed a broom, woke up my son F, and together, we went to our yaya's room to get her to the main house. Afterwards, F and I went outside. The tree was still breakdancing but there was no sign of the man.

As it turns out, the man was just our neighbor. He had parked his car in front of our house, and it was dangerously close to the breakdancing tree. He got nervous and decided to move it.

In the morning, I told my kids the mom-went-momentarily-insane-again story, which came as no surprise to them actually. And as it turns out, my son F wanted to laugh when he saw me looking all freaked out and armed with a broom. Mercifully, he didn't. It would have spoiled the ongoing drama running inside my head. I didn't know what I was thinking. What was I going to do? Sweep him away with the broom?! Mwahahaha