Grateful

I have never felt knee-shaking scared my whole life until last night. My family and I was supposedly going downtown to have dinner; my parents and brother to go grocery-shopping and I to meet some friends. Pero, I don't know how it happened, bigla nalang kaming tinamad to go out. My mom was locking the door when she suddenly saw a huge fire in our backyard.

She called on my dad who was locking our gates. My dad saw the fire, too, he called on the neighbors for help. The neighbors thought he was drunk so it took a while before the neighbors came out to see what's really going on. Some brave men went inside our house, grabbed some pails, and tried to kill the fire. Unfortunately, the fire was already too big for that.

I was shaking when I first saw the fire. I didn't know that it was that overwhelming. My mom was already too frantic. Some of our neighbors even added to her panic, "Get what you could save!" "Where are your children?" "That house will explode anytime soon!" She appeared like she would lose it anytime soon.

Thank God, my brother and I took after my dad's level-headedness. Some people took it as passiveness, but we're just really the calm in the storm. That time, I was ready to lose everything. I even got out of the house barefooted.

But my family is really blessed. That didn't happen. After about 20 minutes, the firemen came to the rescue. Except for the wall in the corner of our fences, everything is in good shape. And oh, the faucet in our garage was intentionally broken for water to flow easily.

The abandoned houses beside ours was burned down before rescue came. I am just also thankful that despite losing the houses, none in the neighborhood was hurt. Also, my family is safe and alive. I do not want to think of the worst that could happen, had we not seen the fire earlier. I believe someone out there is really looking after our safety. I feel a little bit shaken and startled after what happened, but my heart is really grateful.