Fear can have a different
effect on all of us. The best thing it does is to bring out a little courage in
a few of us. All of mine takes place in the final paragraph, so you can either
stay along for the entire ride down Memory Lane or you can jump right to the
end for all of the flowery and emotional language. And there is flowery
language. A lot of it. You know I don’t use it in my writing or friendly
conversation like this, so you’ve been warned of a first here tonight. As
Hurricane Harvey looms in the distance and I sit in my home alone—as I have
been for some time now, save for a few pets, while other family members and
neighbors are attempting to remain safe from the weather in their own homes—I’m
doing the only thing that I can think to do to calm my nerves: writing. Saving
this every few sentences and having to pick up after one brief power outage
already, I face only the unknown as I discover the confirmation that I’ve been
coming down with a cold this week. The timing couldn’t be better as I feel feverish
and shaky from a combination of frayed nerves over my fears of high winds; a
stomach with intense acid reflux at best, an ulcer at worst; and the overall
malaise that a cold brings. But I have plenty of cold medicine, bottled water,
and boarded windows. Meanwhile, I have two once-feral cats in here with me very
unhappy about their situation. They want to go back outside regardless of the
weather. Hurricane or no hurricane, this is a cage to them, and I know just how
they feel. Glass windows barricaded, all we can do is wait it out. There’s no
possible way to get everything of value off the floor in case flood waters
reach inside, and we have to hope that the new roof installed after Hurricane
Ike will allow us to remain safely upstairs and dry if it comes to it.
Up to this point, I’ve been through three
hurricanes in my lifetime in two states—Texas and Florida—as well as two floods
and numerous tropical storms. I have not allowed time to exaggerate the details
of any of those stories. I was lucky. The house I am in now stood through most
of those. My first hurricane was Alicia. I was very young at the time and don’t
feel like looking up exact dates, but it is one of my earliest memories from
about the age of three. I remember my family sleeping behind a couch in the
middle of the living room for two days, away from windows and without
electricity for several days that followed. Our home was sturdy, so I don’t
recall anything more than the sound of thunder through it all. I remember the
disingenuous bravery of my parents. They were scared, too. You couldn’t see the
ground outside when it was over. Leaves and sticks and debris seemed to be
arranged carefully to cover any possible view of the grass or soil beneath it.
My family had to detour around a specific road a few blocks away because I
cried and screamed if I even thought there was a hint that our car might drive
down it. A tornado had mangled the telephone poles that lined this road, and it
took several months for their repair. The poles leaned and hung over the road
even after the lines were repaired, and it was one of the most frightening
images of my childhood memory. Within a month after the hurricane, my mother
began to lose patience with me over my frightened behavior, but I did not
budge. I was not traveling down that road with anyone.
Coastal Florida
was my home during my second major storm, Tropical Storm Marcos. I was about
twelve. This storm did not reach hurricane strength, but a trip to the beach
the day before it made landfall was a sobering experience of the power of
nature. I was hit by a strong crashing wave on shore and very well could have
been swept under, but, thankfully, the wave deposited me right back on land
after churning me around in a giant washing machine. I laughed. Part of me
wanted to do it again because of the adrenaline, and I can understand the
feeling of surfers who face that risk for the thrill. But it wasn’t too bright
within an hour of hindsight. In 1994 and 2000, back in Texas, I faced the two
major floods of my life. The house I am in now, fortunately, was elevated
enough to prevent water from getting inside in 1994, but you couldn’t leave the
front porch without being up to your waist in flood water. The flood of 2000
was not as intense and receded more rapidly.
Katrina doesn’t really belong on this list but feel
the need to mention her. My brother’s wife was pregnant with my nephew at the
time, and my brother was going through army training in South Carolina. Weather
or no weather, time marches on, and his training camp was having a meet and
greet weekend visitation that my sister-in-law insisted upon attending. A few
days after Katrina had passed, we left for South Carolina, forced to take a
number of heavily damaged side roads farther north to leave the state and work
our way around Louisiana to South Carolina. Once we took the first detour,
everything was black except for the headlights, and the tank was on fumes
before we finally hit an area with electricity and an open gas station. We were
truly afraid we were going to be stranded on the side of the road somewhere
because even a full tank of gas couldn’t make the trip from one side of Katrina
to the other. When Rita came along a short time later, my family evacuated. It
proved to be unnecessary, but Katrina had everyone on edge. The hurricane was
nowhere near as miserable as the time I had to spend confined with a few family
members I didn’t want to give the time of day.
Trees fell left and right when Ike hit, but we
stayed. One large oak tree hit my childhood home, slid off the side of the
roof, and hit the house next to it. I lost most of my VHS collection to the
damage, store-bought and broadcast recordings that can’t be replaced in most
cases, but I could have lost much more. That night, I saw one of the spookiest
images I’ve ever seen in my life. I saw an orb of light floating in the yard
and seemingly unaffected by the heavy rain and wind. It looked like a family
member stupidly braving 110mph winds out in the front yard with a flashlight. I
was quickly cured of this thought when I saw the light pass through the chain
link fence and continue hovering across the yard for at least a minute before
it vanished. I became that family member stupidly braving the winds to check on
my brother’s dog when the storm began to die down a bit. Like a scene from
Poltergeist, I had to fight my way past a tree the wind bent over my brother’s
front door. It felt like its branches were trying to reach around me and to
pull me off the ground, but I managed to get past it. The electricity went out
during Ike barely an hour after landfall, and, for my family, it did not return
for two weeks to the day. Fourteen days of sweltering humidity, a hand crank
radio, a pocket fan, plenty of batteries, and a lot of reading by candlelight.
I was still fortunate. For many, it was much worse. My only friends at the time
were online acquaintances. Some were mad when I disappeared and couldn’t get in
touch with them. They were justifiably scared that I might have died, but I was
cut off from civilization.
Remembering the difficult parts never comes easy.
The saddest image of my life from a hurricane is one that I never really wanted
to share, but I feel I should. Just outside of the house, barely a few feet
from my door, a possum was wedged in a y-shaped tree branch. It had drowned
during the night from the heavy wind and rain, and it looked like it was still
alive and sleeping, suspended in the air like a baby in a harness swing. The
entire branch had to be cut down with an extended tree saw to dislodge it, and
I buried the possum as I would have a loyal pet. It broke my heart to think
that I was so close to this poor creature and unable to rescue it from the
weather. It’s burned in my mind how this possum must have climbed the tree for
shelter and fallen or been blown down onto this branch in just the right
position to be trapped helplessly overnight.
Uncertainty rules the night. The storm is picking
up audible strength outside as I type this paragraph, stronger with every
temporary lull. It’s the strike of 9PM Central, a time I usually enjoy a great
deal on Friday nights. There is no enjoyment tonight. Harvey is making
landfall, and several cities closer to the coast are feeling it already. I’m
tired and weak enough to try to sleep through it, but I doubt that will happen
even though my bed is in the safest spot in the house. I continue to write as I
wait for the inevitable power outage. I’ve managed to appease much the anger
that inspired me to sit and write this in the first place. There were several
things I wanted to say under the heading of “nothing else to lose” and “don’t
leave things unresolved or unspoken.” As I said, aside from a few pets, I am
alone here. Most of the loved ones I had during past storms are dead and gone.
I have not spoken to a few of the online acquaintances I had during Ike for
some time, and even a few of them have passed away since then or drifted apart.
At first, I felt as though much of what I wanted to say at the outset was
simply cursing and lashing out with my emotions, and I could just as well
scream it into the storm like Lieutenant Dan. But this first stage of Harvey
has given me plenty of time to think about it.
My flaws,
my response to the world around me, and my hopes for something good to come of
all the bad happening in the world. Maybe none of it matters that much to
convey even in the face of potential disaster. I have to settle, as many of us
do, for doing as much as I can to preserve a small area of space around me.
Easy access to people and events around the world through the Internet brings
with it feelings of helplessness to some and apathy to others, lets others into
your life to worry about you and vice-versa. The helplessness comes from
wanting to preserve things beyond that small area of space, and the apathy, for
some, comes as either a coping mechanism or, sadly, just an inability to care
about things over which you have no control. Despite everything I have seen and
endured in my life, I still believe in the essential truth that the apathy of
the latter only comes from a very small percentage of humanity, even if that
small percentage receives the most attention.
Please take care of yourselves and each other. Oh,
and if you’re looking for poetic wording here or hidden messages in the first
letter of every paragraph, then I’ll just confirm for you right now that it
says exactly what you think it says. I don’t care if it’s hackneyed. It’s from
the heart, and it can be my epitaph. Fuck you, Donald Trump. Fuck you, with
your “good luck to everyone” on your way to another weekend vacation on our tax
dollars while many of us face death and devastation that you, no doubt, will
use to your political advantage. Fuck you, Donald Trump, for pardoning that
piece of shit Arpaio. Fuck you for your nonexistent wall and your “very good
people” marching for a white power America. Fuck your transgender military ban
and your administration’s attacks on women, people of color, immigrants, the
LGBTQ+ community, and the poor. Fuck Steve Bannon, Breitbart, Alex Jones, Fox
News, and all of your other Fake News supporters that have exploited your
complete lack of fitness as a world leader to their mentally deranged
advantage. Fuck everything else you stand for. And if—and this is a big “if”
that probably doesn’t apply because I have known and respected a lot of people
for many years, but I’m covering my bases—you have a problem with what I’ve
said here, think I’m just being hysterical, think I’m tainting a nice little
story about my past experiences with bad weather, or are disappointed in me for
buying into all of the “fake news” to prove I wasn’t as intelligent as you
thought I was, then fuck you, too. I love you, and I’d still give you the shirt
off my back on the street if it came to it, but fuck you. There’s a storm
coming. I don’t give a shit about your political disagreements. I’m going to
care more about picking up the pieces of my home than any pieces this writing
leaves of my reputation. That, if nothing else, is the one thing I couldn’t go
without saying with my mortality—and with the inevitable, perhaps countless,
and likely preventable deaths that will come of Harvey, citizenship status be
damned—bearing down on the state of Texas, its surrounding states, and the
people of Mexico. I wanted to say it a long time ago, and I thank Harvey for at
least giving me the courage to be open about it. Once the lights go out, at
least I won’t have to listen to it for a little while. Or forever, come what
may. None of my feelings on that are going to change the slightest when the storm
clears, and the power has held out long enough for me to be absolutely sure I
mean it. I always argue with myself about making judgments about people I’ve
never truly known, but not tonight. I’ve seen enough. I’ve read enough. I’ve
heard enough bigoted support of you from the mouths of my own family members.
This is on your plate. All of it. I hope 11 million more illegals swim over the
border overnight. I hope the news to come is loaded with stories of transgender
military personnel rescuing people heroically from the storm. And since none of
that really matters to you anyway, I hope you never sink another valid hole at
golf, either, you greedy, petty, attention-whoring orange troglodyte.
No matter who you are
out there tonight, please try to stay safe.
