WAITING FOR THE HURRICANE
So far, the news is more intrusive than the actual event—everyone in my Florida neighborhood is concerned about Irma, the biggest monster hurricane ever recorded. While writing this, I am still monitoring its menacing trek which has changed somewhat, but no one really knows where it will land and for how long.
It’s very much like waiting for an enemy attack in a unprovoked, unnecessary war.[image error]
The fear is palpable, and heard in snatches of conversations while waiting in lines at the supermarket. There is no water in any of the stores I explored except for the expensive Italian seltzer ones which no one seems to be buying. Nor are there transistor radios, or flashlights or 6 volt batteries.
Gas pumps are empty, except for a few “regular” pumps. It’s as though people bought the highest quality gas for the extra unknown miles in search of a shelter of some sort somewhere.
The ones who are still here were passing me by in their pick-ups filled with the boards they will be putting on windows.
At the convenience store where I did find gas, the woman ahead of me in line bought several lotto tickets—very optimistic I thought. Then I made a mental list of all the practical cleaning things I will probably need next week when this nuisance leaves us devastated, wearied, and steals away our routines, comforts, schedules, security. Our daily mundane yet sanity-saving normalcies. Irma is a low thief as well as a murderer.
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On my way home, I passed several women walking on the lonely sidewalks—they are singular, but seem to be the same type: older, shabbily dressed, and carrying tote bags or knapsacks, and large umbrellas. I wonder where they are going walking in this oppressive heat, where they will be when they won’t be able to walk outside in a few hours.
I’ve been bagging all my book manuscripts which I have to edit including my new novel. I may not have time or electricity to input anything for a while. Inside another large black plastic bag I slide other projects: a book I am translating for someone else, my unfinished essays, and other cobbled fictional pieces. For a macabre moment I think of body bags and how this would be my legacy if anyone finds these remainders sitting lumped, dejected, unfinished in my living room.
I laugh at the words “living room.”
When we are faced with huge cataclysmic phenomena that could strike us, we look for omens. I do anyway. It soothes my anxiety in the ways that a benevolent horoscope or I Ching reading will. So here’s a good omen: I found a cache of unused sterno cans I had forgotten about. Bad omen: I broke the glass chimney portion of my hurricane lamp while taking it down from a shelf. Good omen: caring neighbors with a back-up generator offering me a place if mine becomes unbearable. Bad omen: their phone doesn’t work.
Good omen: I bought the last 10 pound bag of ice.
No more bad omens, but a memory.[image error]
The last devastating hurricane Central Florida experienced (and me along with it) was Charley in 2004. We were hit with a surprise wallop twice by the same damn hurricane, and the power was out for days. Of course, the weather turned hot and very steamy once it was truly over. I drove around my neighborhood, carefully avoiding all the orphaned roof tiles and downed trees and piles of wet trash until I saw a miracle truck. An ice company was giving out bags of ice for free.
I was so grateful I grabbed and tore the bag I was given, and applied fistfuls of the ice gems to my forehead, which ironically was the soothing poultice that broke through the numbness I had felt for what seemed like years and years.
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