In the summer of 2005, when hurricane season began, I filled a big Tupperware container with batteries and flashlights and some canned goods and Band-Aids and whatever else I thought might help us in an unimaginably bad situation.
That August, my husband and I had only been in our first home for four months. When hurricane Katrina swept across South Florida, we boarded up our windows and missed a day of work and then laughed a little about what a non-issue the hurricane had turned out to be. Nothing like Charley and Bonnie from the year before.
I was pregnant with my first child and grateful that our little house had remained absolutely safe.
Then, the next day, the reports started coming in from the Gulf Coast around Louisiana and Mississippi.
Devastation.
On my lunch break, I walked to a restaurant where my best friend waited tables. I sat with the newspaper and a salad. She came and took a break with me, and we tried to wrap our minds around the loss of life, around the destruction. But we were safe and dry and fed and sheltered in the back corner of a little Italian restaurant.
I bought diapers that week. Shampoo. Tampons. Wet wipes. Bottled water. I parked outside of Target and loaded my bags onto the back of a moving truck decorated with signs of hope and faith. I didn’t need to belong to a church to feel the spirit moving the truckload of young volunteers who were about to try to drive into the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane.
I rubbed my middle and thought about mothers and little babies. I cried.
**
Why do we stay in Florida? Why do we stay on the Gulf Coast, when three or four months of the year leave us in the middle of a cosmic game of roulette?
Maybe we’re just stubborn. Maybe we can’t let go of those fiery summer sunsets, the towering shapes of thunderheads and lightning that bulb-flashes through the night. Our weather is only truly mild for two months or so, little reprieves in the spring and fall before the winter gets too cold for our tropical temperaments and the summer gets thick and hot and miserable. We stick it out anyway, for all out for the beautiful days, the afternoons in the swimming pool, the sparkling-crisp winter mornings and snow-free Februaries.
We leave the Weather Channel on, waiting for the tropical update. Projected paths dancing across the state, ribbons of possibility. We know our evacuation routes, or who to call for a hurricane party.
Some of us have lost nothing. Some of us have lost everything.
We stay because home is home, even when nature tries her best to wipe us away with a big cyclonic eraser. We hang on to our bending palm trees, fingers bloodied, hearts racing.
Each year we hope to stay out of the way.
**
My husband’s grandmother, a tiny Columbian woman who always dresses impeccably, lights Palm Sunday reeds on fire in the back yard and dances and prays the rain away. She hopes.
**
Florida, the big phallic target, the hurricane-magnet, suffered survivor’s guilt after Katrina. She bruised us, teased us, and then gathered up her skirts and pulled heat and strength from the warm Gulf waters and rained death onto a city full of art and life and music.
We watched on TV, our power lines intact, our feet dry.
**
My mother-in-law tells stories of Hurricane Andrew, of losing her home. My husband remembers going to Orlando, spending time at Walt Disney World. He doesn’t remember his family nearly breaking apart like the rooftop that caved in back in Miami. As a child, he didn’t experience the strain that comes from unimaginable stress.
**
Clean underwear. Toilet paper. Coffee. Electricity. Pillows. These things are taken for granted. In the wake of destruction—from hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, mudslides—I wonder when life becomes normal again, normal enough to want a comfortable place to sleep, a television show on the DVR, a good book, some makeup. Coffee at the Starbucks down the street, an afternoon at the playground around the corner.
When I was five, we evacuated for Hurricane Elena. We spent the night in a hotel in Tampa and I didn’t worry about our house; I worried about our two dogs left at home in the laundry room with a stepping stool to help them get on top of the washer and dryer just in case.
Our house didn’t flood. The dogs were fine.
A few years later, I sat on the couch through tropical storms. I watched the sliding glass door shudder. I watched our screened porch go gray and opaque from the force of the rain. I listened to the eerie sound of a storm with no thunder, of wind that moans and hums and growls. I grinned, excited, too young to know what the ribbons of possibility were.
When I was twenty-three, I stayed in my mom’s swimming pool as the first band of a tropical storm approached. I braced myself against the wall and reached my hands out and let the cold rain and wind screech against me. I understood, for a reckless half an hour, why some people wait for the storm with arms wide open.
**
“What if a hurricane blows our house away?” my four-year-old asks me, his little brow creased with worry.
“We can see hurricanes coming, babydoll. We’ll get in our car with everything we need—”
“Like my brother?”
“Like your brother, and we’ll drive to a hotel that’s in a safe place.”
“We’ll bring all my buddies and my Radiator Springs friends?”
“Yep, we’ll bring everything we need to be safe.”
**
I hope. I stay. I plan. I watch. I live on the Gulf Coast, and I’m not leaving.
* *
Beginning today, Story Bleed Magazine is hosting Hope Remains, a blog carnival sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope. The blog carnival celebrates the persistent hope and passionate loyalty of Gulf Coast residents.
In honor of the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Tide Loads of Hope is hosting a free concert in New Orleans on August 24th with Faith Hill and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. If you live in the area, visit Velveteen Mind to find out how to score tickets.
I’d like to thank Tide Loads of Hope for inviting me to contribute to the blog carnival, and for sponsoring this post.
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