I was thinking wind, not water, since hurricanes were not in my repertoire until Kenna proved to me with tremendous clarity that ignorance is not always bliss and denial is much more than a river.

I’m alive in spite of myself, despite my shocking naiveté about nature’s omnipotence and my avoidance of unpleasant realities. And it’s not that I had no warning. The day before storm surge pounded the coast, a fellow expat in the office was alerted by a slew of emails from concerned friends. So I responded by going into journalistic mode, researching it on the Internet and confirming that a hurricane was indeed heading our way. Like a good professional, I passed those words along to everyone I could, while entirely missing the point of what they meant to me personally since I was staying in a ground-floor oceanfront condo.

I guess I thought I was covering my bases by questioning people – including seasoned sailors whom I reasoned understood these things – to sniff out fear. But nobody seemed alarmed. All were blasé in fact, joking around and reiterating the mantric refrain: “Cabo Corrientes keeps hurricanes from entering the bay.” My repartee – which I pride myself on much more than my common sense – included a reference to dolphins supposedly not letting sharks into the bay, either.

Regardless, not facing facts almost did me in. Yet love, in the form of a back door open so cats could take refuge, saved me. Had it been closed, I’d have never have gotten out. The specifics of the terrifying events after the waves punched through the front door and sent me flying, swimming and wading don’t matter. What does is what’s happened since the winds and seas calmed.

I entered a state of grace and discovered the kindness of strangers. One gave me clothes, another shoes, and yet others shelter through the worst of the havoc.

And during the week since, I’ve seen the most sterling qualities of the human spirit in action. Shoulder to shoulder, workers, managers, waiters and even some tourists share the backbreaking work of shoveling the sea floor back where it belongs and cleaning up the mess.

Yet there’s no sense that anyone feels sorry for themselves. People are singing, laughing and living with joy in the moment – as they always do here, but now it’s impossible not to notice. Crossing busy four-lane roads with broken traffic lights and unwieldy piles of glass-sharded dirt become games rather than crosses to bear. And I’m in awe of their resiliency.

People I barely know helped rescue what was left above the three-foot indoor waterline and dig through the mud for whatever personal treasures could be saved. The condo I was in wasn’t even mine, though I had lived there for close to three months while my friend, Pat Henry, was in the United States promoting her recently released book “By the Grace of the Sea – A Woman’s Solo Voyage Around the World.”

Today, but not for long, the 20 acres of verdant gardens with stately palms, pools and low-rise condominiums looks like the set from one of those kitschy sci-fi films after the effects of a nuclear bomb. Yet it’s a place of revelation, of miracles and hope.

To my great joy, at least eight of the 15 cats I’d befriended there made it, although if you saw the place you’d marvel at how. I had locked my favorite in the bathroom in a foolhardy attempt to keep it safe from what I thought would be little more than flying glass. But when I opened the door, to my horror the toilet was uprooted, with a foot of mud, sea wall chunks and other devastation strewn about as if spewed from a maniacal blender – but no Vandy. I was devastated, thinking that in my desire to protect him, I’d killed him. Meanwhile, the other cats, all much smarter than I, had run for the hills and were now returning – just as Vandy would have if left to follow his own instincts.

Then suddenly, like a furry little Phoenix rising, there was my friend, unharmed and running into my arms – a tangible sign of forgiveness that sometimes, in spite of the silly unthinking things we do, we are given another chance.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions about what you’re reading, you’re encouraged to let me know at heather@mexmags.com.