We run away

I wake up at odd hours sometimes. Two in the morning, eight in the morning—it doesn’t seem to follow any sort of logic, and I’ve long since stopped trying to understand it. What I do know is that once I’m awake, that’s it. There’s no rolling over, no drifting back off. I’ve learned not to fight it, because that only guarantees I’ll lay there stewing in frustration. So I get up, find something to do, and let the day start whether it’s ready or not. That morning it was 3 a.m. I poked around on the computer for a while, then did what has quietly become our most important ritual lately—checking the weather. Within minutes it was obvious something had changed, and not in a subtle way. The forecast had shifted hard overnight. Winds were now stronger, arriving sooner, and behind them was something far more concerning: a storm system dropping down from Fiji that was shaping up to be a full-blown cyclone. We thought we had another day to decide what to do. Turns out, we had hours. I woke Kerri…