METAMORPHOSIS: Building the Dome of a Home

for the entire house, so we all started stumbling about. In a bizarre way, it reminded me of
Christmas: everyone was up early with eager anticipation to see what surprises awaited upon
sunrise.
The scenes that unfolded were difficult to comprehend. Houses were completely gone or
destroyed beyond recognition. The Dome's front and back stairs were gone. We were awestruck
by the immensity of the damage. It was incredible and literally unbelievable. In a matter of hours,
the landscape was irrevocably changed.
After the initial perusal from my deck, I needed to lie back down for a little while. We had made it.
The rest could wait. I needed more sleep. I went back to bed and heard a light tapping. What
now? On one of the inside windows of the house that looks into the downstairs, my wife had
placed a stained glass decoration. It was ever so slightly tapping the window.
The house was moving and rocking so imperceptibly I could not physically feel it, but the reality
was that it was moving. My initial thought was that the house was sitting in six to eight feet of
quicksand. I confirmed this conclusion later when we found our landscaping bricks eight feet
down in the sand. Had the house tilted? Would I find the Dome of a Home standing at an angle
when I went outside?
There were no stairs down from the Dome of a Home anymore and the elevator was inoperable.
All that preparation and I had forgotten a ladder! Oops! Our hero, Craig, shimmied down the
power pole and found a homeless ladder. We donned sand goggles to protect our eyes from the
blinding sand, still being driven at tropical storm speeds across the island. The ground was
soupy with several patches of quicksand waiting to devour you as it sucked you down to your
knees. Water was still coursing across the island with great force. Yet, the NBC crew pursued
filming the neighborhood's damage.
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