The Day After

A motorcycle roared by yesterday morning and woke me up. I knew that the flooded road must have drained overnight. Sunshine and blue skies greeted me after I turned the rod to open the blinds.

After breakfast, I went outside and reset the enclosed porch. I returned folding chairs to their normal places. I took potted plants, and a garbage can out of my studio and set them outside. Then I grabbed a rake and a branch cutter.

Debris (downed branches, shredded palm fronds, magnolia seed pods, and an empty but clean mayonnaise jar) littered the lawn and driveway. I filled two garbage cans and one and a half bags over the next 90 minutes. A partially detached ten-foot branch from the neighbor’s Dr. Seuss tree lay across the fire bush next to the east fence. I decided to cut it into sections on the following day as I had to go inside to make lunch.

When I sat down with Judy to eat, I felt unusually tired. The temperature had dropped ten degrees below normal, so I hadn’t suffered heat fatigue from working outside. Three stressful but inactive days spent waiting out the storms must have affected me. Getting back in motion felt like a rude jolt.

I took a walk after lunch. I saw “high tide” lines of debris encroaching farther and farther into the yards as I approached the corner. The road beyond the intersection looked muddy. All that water rushing down the road yesterday must have pooled here.

Tire tracks tore through the yard of the house on the corner. Someone had cut through to avoid the high water. I saw a makeshift patch on the power line at the next corner. I saw shredded trees and lawns covered by small branches and leaves on the way to Aloma. A split branch from a bedraggled evergreen forced me to walk into the road just before I reached Aloma, and when I rounded the corner, I saw an uprooted tree. It had crushed a backyard fence. Its outer branches had missed clipping a power line by a few inches.

I saw muddy water still standing at the curbs as I circled home on Carnation. Sections of fences (formerly facing east) lay on several lawns. Some neighbors had piled stacks of branches near the road. Signposts leaned to the west in gaps where houses had not blocked the wind.

Near home, I saw a group of dogwalkers strolling down a muddy side street. They talked cheerfully as they tended their dogs. Things hadn’t returned to normal but weren’t nearly as bad.

The Unexpected Sunday Morning

Last Sunday morning, right after settling down to write after a late breakfast, I heard a tremendous WHOMP! I hustled outside in bare feet, ratty pants and a t-shirt. I found two cars resting side by side on my front lawn. Tire tracks tore across the lawn from the curb to where the vehicles rested. Broken glass and shattered bits of bumper littered road and grass. My neighbor, a young man named David, hovered nearby talking on his cell. I noticed that the car nearest to the road had antler Christmas decorations attached to its roof.

A middle-aged woman exited her silver car and cried, “You hit me!” Another woman said something unintelligible from inside her red car, and the first woman responded, “You didn’t stop!” Red car woman said, “I stopped at the stop sign!” Silver car said, “But then you pulled out in front of me!”

I went back inside to get car keys and sandals. I needed the keys to retrieve a mask from my car. I told Judy what had happened as I scurried around the house. She asked, “Was anyone hurt?” I told her that I heard two women arguing and that David had already stepped in to help.

We heard sirens in the distance. A fire truck and ambulance arrived shortly after. I returned to the scene and saw two EMTs unloading a gurney from an ambulance. A woman still sat in the red car. I finally saw that her air bag had fired. Two young men, silver car lady’s sons, stood by and retrieved possessions from her car as she sat at the curb. A sheriff’s deputy pulled up. No one, except for David and me, wore masks. Even the EMTs went about their business bare-faced.

Judy joined me and asked Silver if she needed anything, a drink of water? The woman looked grateful for the offer but declined. She said, “I’m okay. My shoulder just hurts.”

Red car woman turned out to be a bird-legged oldster pushing eighty. She refused the ambulance ride. She appeared emotionally shaken but spoke clearly and stood steadily without swaying or showing weakness in the knees. The deputy interviewed her first, then let her toddle home on her own power up Chilean Drive. Silver car lady explained to the officer that she had been travelling down Bougainvillea Drive when the red car pulled out in front of her. Silver said, “I tried to swerve, but it happened so fast I couldn’t do anything.”

Silver car lady eventually left with her sons in their vehicle. I began to wonder about the removal of the two cars still resting side by side on my lawn. Two wreckers eventually showed up. Men attached chains to the undercarriages of the cars and pulled them, one at a time, onto flatbed tow trucks. They had to stop to adjust the steering wheels on the cars, and I marveled that the front tires on either vehicle could turn at all. The red car’s engine compartment had been bashed in completely, The right half of the silver car’s engine compartment had been crushed.

Another sheriff’s deputy parked near the stop sign on Chilean. He watched the first car’s removal, then sauntered up to me. He asked, “What’s under the silver car?” I said, “A little palmetto and some bricks I put around it. It’s smashed all the way over.” “What’s it worth?” he asked. “About $80,” I replied.

The officer copied my license information to identify me as the property owner. He printed out a damage report and explained how to call the red car woman’s insurance company for compensation. He did me a favor by rounding up the replacement cost to $100.

After the cars had been cleared and the deputy left, I surveyed the damage. A tow truck man had picked up bigger pieces of debris and used a push broom to sweep glass and bits of plastic to the curb. Shards of glass, chrome, and plastic still littered the road and my lawn. I got a trash can from the studio and began to sweep and pick up the sharp, shiny remnants. I kept a wary eye out for passing cars as I now considered the intersection dangerous. Sudden accidents could easily kill even a cautious pedestrian or an old fart scrabbling around his yard on hands and knees.

I examined the palmetto, discovered that the taproot hadn’t been sheared, and propped it upright with some of the scattered bricks. I mounded loose earth over the exposed roots and poured a gallon of water around its base. Against all odds, it just might make it.

Puerto Rico

I’ve sat through four category 1 hurricanes.  Some folks can sleep during these (Hurricanes Irma and Charlie came early in the morning), but the sounds of debris hitting the side of my house and branches bouncing off my roof kept me wide awake and cringing.  The adrenaline rush kicked into gear again the next morning when I went outside and surveyed the aftermath.  We’ve been luck in that both storms shredded leaves off the trees surrounding my house and dropped branches, but we suffered no significant property damage.

It took several days using hand tools (and with the help of my wife and kids) to clear the yard after Charlie.  I was 45 at the time, and the heat exhausted but didn’t sicken me.  The ten days spent without power were mostly bearable even though the temperatures were in the low to mid 90s during the day.  I did have to be pulled aside by my wife on a few occasions to drink water and eat a bit of food as I began to show signs of heat exhaustion.  Cooking and refrigeration required a lot of extra effort (ice remained scarce until we found a Publix on a buried power line a few miles down the road; coffee water had to be heated up on a grill), and bathing meant cold showers.  And we were fairly lucky in that we had safe water.  Friends of ours scooped water flowing from a water main break to fill their toilet tanks.  Our neighborhood smelled like sewage in the mornings and evenings as the lifting station pumps were out of commission or running slowly on gasoline powered generators.

The power outage for Irma lasted five days, but I was in much worse shape from sleepless nights and heat exhaustion.  I can’t endure as well at 58, and it’s taken a few weeks to recover since the power was restored.  A friend of ours, who lost power for six days, ended up in an ER suffering from a fever and vertigo.  A nurse asked our friend if her power was out.  The hospital had been getting a steady stream of patients worn down by the heat.

So that sucked, but multiply it by 100, and you’ll get a glimpse of what it’s like in Puerto Rico.  We are being told by our president that “community effort” and an attitude of not “expecting to have everything done for them” are required for speedier recovery.  This being said about folks who have survived a category five hurricane, whose homes, if they still exist, have been badly damaged, who haven’t food, medicine, transportation, clean water and a functional sewage system.

Ever try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps while in shock, while suffering from hunger, thirst and extended heat exhaustion?  Ever try to do that without being able to purchase tools and equipment (ATMs shut down, debris-blocked roads, gas shortages, nowhere left to buy a two-by-four)?  Ever try to be effective while wondering whether your life will ever be the same again, while not being able to contact loved ones to let them know you’re alive, while wondering if your son’s asthma medicine (mother’s diabetes medicine, etc.) will hold out until new supplies arrive?

If you agree with the president’s pronouncements about Puerto Rico, then I wish you an equivalent fate to what the Puerto Ricans have suffered.  I’ll look forward to seeing how well you all perform under similar circumstances.  Please show us all the shining example of your determination and grit while standing in a shredded pile of belongings in front of your collapsed house.  I’m waiting to be inspired.

 

 

Man Cleaning

Laundry room debris field

I’ve done my share of cleaning house over 30+ years of marriage.  I stayed home with the kids when they were little and waged the losing battle of keeping their chaos at bay.  I once told a college class that managing a house occupied by two toddlers was like composing a term paper with a drunk roommate deleting key passages whenever the writer looked away for a split second.  All accomplishments are doomed to erasure.

Doing chores while surrounded by little barbarians gave me a fatalistic approach to house cleaning.  I got in the habit of taking care of the worst of the worst, nibbling at the bits I somewhat cared about, and letting major areas collect dust and debris.

Dresser top of lost hope

Recently our circumstances have forced me to take on more of the chores than I ever did before.  The kids are grown and gone, so there should be less to do.  But now I’m starting to see things through my wife’s eyes and realize that the cobwebs growing from the ceiling in the back room really shouldn’t be allowed to hang down to eye level.  The strange odor in the laundry room behind the Christmas tree boxes no longer lingers, but its fossilized source really ought to be removed (dead lizard or corn snake?).  Ancient stains on the side of the fridge could be scrubbed off, as well as stratified layers of greasy fuzz on the kitchen ceiling fan.

I eventually come to the conclusion that I could start at one end of the house and scrub inch by inch.  Repainting and patching could follow.  New curtains could replace the moth eaten ones over the front window, and the coat closet could be excavated for usable tennis rackets, tennis balls, and vacuum cleaner attachments from amongst the debris at the bottom.  The job seems endless.

And now I begin to understand a major difference between the sexes.  Women tend to see housework as a manageable project that produces a cozy nest if the right effort is applied, if their housemate abstains from random acts of stinky sock/wet towel dropping.  Men see the interior of a house and shut down.

Housework induced catatonia in males is not always caused by laziness, but more often by willful blindness in the face of overwhelming odds.  The blindness has no evil intent, but is more a matter of self-preservation.  A man who has taken the time to do a thorough survey of his domestic environment is like an astronaut spacewalking and contemplating the stars.  He feels so small compared to a vast number of tasks spread over a mini-universe of domestic space.

When confronted by the infinite, it’s best for a man to pretend that the majority of it does not exist.  He pops a beer, sits in a recliner and waves to his friends, the spiders hanging all around him.  He might knock down their webs down in a day or two, but at that moment he just wants a little company.

Entropic night stand