Lucky Day

On days like this, when so many people fear for their lives and property, when so many have already lost theirs, I feel lucky. My life has its ordinary ups and downs, but I am safe, and I am not on my own. I feel so fortunate to be married on days like this.
We have some minor damage from last night’s storm, but we got off very easy. Around us, at least one person has lost his life and others are bracing to lose property to the overflowing Swatara, Brandywine, and Neshaminy creeks and the Delaware, Schuylkill, Raritan, and Passaic rivers.
And we don’t need to worry, as many in Yemen, Bahrain, and other middle eastern nations do, that a trip to the store today could result in being teargassed or shot to death. No one is bombing our town or lobbing rockets at us from the shore; that is happening in Libya, not here. No suicide bombers are doing here what they did today in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan.
None of the 10,000 homes in Christchurch, New Zealand that cannot be rebuilt are ours, and we have never even seen anything like Christchurch’s train tracks. Our trains are still running.
We are not bracing for tsunami damage, as those in Hawaii, California, and Oregon are. And we most definitely have not watched our buildings tear apart, collapse, and kill or seen cars, trucks, and other heavy equipment wash up over our farms in a dark soup of salt water and toxic chemicals, like so many in Japan have today. We have not experienced even a 5.0 earthquake. We cannot imagine the terror of an 8.9 earthquake (almost 10,000 times as strong) and 70+ aftershocks of 5.0 and above in just the nine hours since it hit.
This is my lucky day. If you’re reading this, it’s probably your lucky day, too. And if you have a husband, a wife, or any life partner with whom to face whatever comes tomorrow, you have an extraordinarily lucky life.