It's all in the timing... describe a time when the timing was critical.

In the pre-daylight hours of Mother's Day 2008 we were abruptly awakened by the startling sound of something banging wildly against our bedroom wall and the muted wailing of a siren. Rich leapt out of bed and opened the front door, letting in the full shrieking of the tornado sirens. The wind was blowing so hard it was literally howling, and the pounding sound we heard was the front porch swing banging against the house.

By this time, both the girls had gotten out of bed and were coming down the stairs wide-eyed. The three of us followed Rich to the sunroom door. Since the power was out, he had grabbed a flashlight and he wanted to check on the dogs outside in the dog run. As he opened the door, I caught a glimpse of his flashlight beam on one of the large sunroom windows. The glass was bowing under the pressure, the trees in the backyard were roaring, and I could hear the sound of leaves and branches hitting the windows. I yelled at Rich to forget about the dogs and close the door; we all needed to go down to the basement.

Just after he turned and shut the door behind him, we heard a thud so loud and strong it shook the entire house, followed by the shattering of glass. Rich had closed that door in the nick of time. The four of us scrambled downstairs to the basement and huddled in the dark. As Rich's flashlight played around the room, we could still hear the sound of shrieking sirens and howling winds. Within five minutes it was all over.

We crept up the stairs to an eerie stillness. Dawn was just breaking outside, casting an incongruous pink glow over the destruction that had just occurred. We cautiously opened the sunroom door to find that a tall sweetgum tree had crashed through the roof, shattering one of the big floor-to-ceiling windows. The treetop was literally in the room with us. If Rich had kept walking out the door to get to the dogs, he would most likely have been crushed by that tree.

Macon suffered extensive damage from that Mother's Day tornado. Even three and a half years later, I can point out places that were damaged and never fixed. There are abandoned homes with bright blue tarps still hanging over holes in their roofs, and empty lots where houses were completely destroyed and never rebuilt. Ironically, a week later Mother Nature informed us she wasn't done with us yet. A huge damaged tree from the empty lot next door fell over, took down another tree of ours in the process, and they both crashed into the other side of our sunroom, damaging it further. So May 2008 became forever etched in our minds not only as the time that Rich narrowly escaped being crushed, but when a total of three trees fell on our house. An odd juxtaposition of extreme good fortune and very bad luck all at the same time. What are the chances?