Frank

The power died on a Saturday at 3 in the morning. Fortunately, it was cold and raining, and Atch and I didn't have to stay up and fan the heat off the boys' foreheads.

When we woke, the wind still howled, the rain still poured, and Woog had wet the bed. We huddled under the covers and wondered whether it was a storm. There had been no warning from the weather bureau, after all.

I fretted about the package I had to send to head office, and Atch worried about a time deposit placement due that very same day.

There was no sun with which to dry Woog's soaked mattress, and no light to brighten the cold damp gloom, so we made our way down with candles, and discovered that (horrors!) no water flowed from any of the taps, not a drop. We had to bring buckets in from the huge storage pail we had out back. No electricity and no water meant I couldn't do the laundry. And even if I did four loads manually with the abundant rainwater, it still wouldn't dry. What a spot to find ourselves in!

After breakfast, Atch carted his whole family to the bank where he worked, because storm or no storm, that time deposit placement was going to be made. The boys gazed wide-eyed from the windows at the trees that had fallen while they were asleep, and at the flooded roads where brave denizens waded in waist-deep water, bombarded by the steadily falling rain and wildly blowing wind. This scene of destructon beat Cartoon Network and Nickolodeon any day.

The car radio was calling out locations of various evacuation centers and reporting that this, ladies and gentlemen, was Frank, and his itinerary had changed. We were now on the path of a full-blown typhoon.

At Atch's bank, I texted my officemates, and all reported being shut in by the storm. I frantically called the Banco de Oro branch where I was scheduled to deposit my previous day's collection. It had been declared closed due to the weather conditions.

Woog and Eli were oblivious to the maelstrom outside, running about, tapping on typewriter keys, and chatting with the raincoat-clad security guards. How I envied their excitement, whilst we adults went around with creases of worry dotting our leathery foreheads.

Back home, we called my parents and my father reported that a tree had fallen on his car, snapping his sideview mirror off. Our storage pail finally depleted, Atch put several buckets in succession under the generous downspout for water to wash the dishes with. “But the cats do their business on the roof,” I protested, “this might very well be contaminated water!”

“Aif,” he explained patiently, “whatever business the cats left has already been washed away by this rain ages ago.”

The germaphobe in me cringed anyway and I wished I could add disinfectant to the dishwater. And as I couldn't do the laundry, I waxed the floors and dusted the upstairs bedrooms instead. I didn't even raise a sweat. One good thing about having cold rainy weather is doing heavy housework without getting all hot and sweaty.

The power finally came on, low in voltage. But still no water. On Sunday, my father arrived with their now thoroughly thawed chicken and fish, which we then proceeded to stuff in our freezer. He also came bearing plastic jugs of water (they have water!), and our unwashed bodies danced a celebratory jig of thanks.

Alas. In his haste to get all our imported water into the storage pail, a heavy jug slipped from Atch's grasp, fell to the bottom, and tore a hole the size of Eli's head. All our precious water drained out. Atch looked like he wanted to wail. Around him, the storm raged on.

All this reminded me of my freshman year in college when a typhoon blew the roof off the neighboring administration building, sending reams of documents flitting all over the rain-soaked campus. The roof of our dorm started grinning up at the storm as well, so us girls bundled our belongings in bedsheets and fled downstairs to the boys' quarters were we prayed decades of the rosary and cried (laughed-cried-laughed) hysterically until the worse was over. There was no water for weeks afterward, and large groups of us took fully-clothed baths at the artesian well outside, waving to other students coming off the schoolbus who were gaping at our sudsy selves.

If we laughed then, I suppose we should try and laugh now. The boys seemed to be taking it pretty well, so we bundled them over to my parents house where there was water (but no power), and left them amusing themselves with shadow animals, while Atch and I took a breather and watched the second Incredible Hulk. No contest there. Edward Norton remains a million miles better than Eric Bana, scrawny limbs notwithstanding.

We bought sweet ripe mangoes and roasted chicken, splurged on a new water storage pail and a couple of cd's. It seemed almost like a holiday for us.

In the midst of this, we got text messages from my sister, the medical student in Iloilo, who thankfully lived on the third floor but had to swim to the neighborhood store just to buy drinking water and rice. The flood was waist deep where she was. In other parts of the country, it was a lot worse. We later learned a boat sank, 700 passengers were missing, people and their kids drowned, and landslides were plentiful. Many more went missing in the storm. We sent up a prayer of thanks that all of our family was unharmed. Inconvenienced and water-logged, but unharmed.

We spent the rest of Sunday at my parents' as Frank blew his last flurries of wind and rain. We played the new cd's full blast on the car stereo, bonding together and drawing warmth in the face of all the cold.