In a brand new hotel in Chapel Hill, N.C., I realized something this summer: My family is woefully un-prepared should disaster strike.
In the wee hours of the night, as we slept on virgin pillows and virgin sheets, we were suddenly awoken by the most wretched of noises. It sounded as if a pterodactyl was throwing up in the bathroom. Loud and rancorous, it assaulted the ears — a pulsing, throbbing, piercing noise.
BLURT-BLURT-BLURT.
My first reaction was anger. How dare some North Carolina pterodactyl disturb my slumber. The nerve!
There’s nothing like, and nothing worse, than the disorientating fog of being awoken in the middle of the night. You slowly come to your senses — grab a bit of awareness out of the air — and then remember that pterodactyls are long-since extinct. The blaring noise was really a fire alarm.
“How dare the hotel be on fire!” I remember thinking.
But why wasn’t I jumping out of bed? Why wasn’t I scrambling to gather us up and rush us out the door?
Oh, we moved so slowly. My wife found her glasses and did a crossword. I thought about brushing my teeth — what if I was going to be interviewed on local TV! — and searched for a few valuables. And then, like slow, lumbering sloths we filed out the room with the other un-rushables and waited in the parking lot until the fire department declared the joint safe.
Fine powder from the construction had set off the temperamental fire detectors. We all filed back in.
“You know,” I said, feeling embarrassed and like a failure as a husband and a father — shoot, I was supposed to be the protector! — “That was pretty sad. We need to practice.”
We all looked at each other — all three of us — and felt kind of low.
It caused me to do some soul searching. This is my family — important people. And I couldn’t let them down if a real disaster struck. I couldn’t be so casual.
I joked with my daughter the other day that something scared me. “Oh come on,” she said. “You’re a dad. Dads are brave. Dads don’t get scared.”
She had a point. Or at least she had set a high bar of expectations for me. Brave! I would also need to be brave and fearless and strong — to jump into action when action was necessary and take control.
So maybe this was all floating around in the cerebral cortex the other night — actually early in the morning. We still sleep with a baby monitor in my daughter’s room, and it amplifies any noise in the house.
Like, for instance, a CRASH! A loud one. One that rippled through like a shockwave — a thud followed by this thunderbolt of smashing glass.
I didn’t so much hear it as I felt it like an electric shock. It jolted my body out of bed. When I opened my eyes, I was standing up in jungle cat pose. Ready to pounce, and before I knew it, I was barreling down stairs.
The only thing I remember thinking is: “If dragon, kill with bare hands and eat its liver.”
I raced into my daughter’s room only to find … nothing. She was sound asleep. The dog looked up at me with the kind of face that said, “Time for breakfast already?”
No, dumb dog. Burglars! Monsters! Huns! ATTACK! ATTACK AND KILL!
She didn’t so much as twitch an ear.
So what was it? Where was it? I raced through the house, switching on lights and girding for battle. Wolverines?!? I’ll tear them to shreds! Where are they?
Then I found it — the beast, the terror, the thing that went bump, slam and crash in the night. A photo in a frame I had just hung on a newly painted wall stepped out for a stretch. It toppled off the wall and shattered its glass upon meeting the floor.
That was it. That was all. I breathed a sigh of relief.
But as the adrenaline faded, I felt good. No dragon, but I felt ready this time. No hesitation — just total reaction. I didn’t dawdle, didn’t mull it over or waste time on fear. There’s no time for that when you’re a dad. Only time to do something noble and strong. To protect the family. And yes, even to be brave.