I spent much of last Monday holed up in my house, listening to the screeching of the storm. I had the blinds down, and the heavy curtains drawn, in case any glass from the bay window should shatter, but I peeked out every once in a while, to see the trees dancing in a spastic manner that was not unlike my uncle at my wedding several years ago.
Watching my one daughter patiently playing with a wooden train (the two year old) and the other sticking various stuffed animals in her mouth (the 7 month old), I was the picture of calm, cool, and put together. Only I really wasn't. How could I be in the middle of Frankenstorm (as an English teacher, I wanted to call it "Dr. Frankenstorm's Monster", but I digress)?
My husband had been, as he put it, leaking out of both ends, since about 3AM the night before, when something he ate at our big one's second birthday party decided to make its re-entry into the world, projectile style. He was a mess- pale, feverish, unable to lift his head off the pillow, and turning over to throw up into the "training potty" we had bought for the two year old. Food poisoning is never fun, but throw in a hurricane, and you get the added bonus of knowing that you are playing nurse, because there's no way in the world you can get to help if you need it.
As Sandy was making her way up the coast, directly hitting my family's Long Beach Island House (no, we don't know if it's still standing), I gathered together candles, washed laundry and dishes, and collected water in every receptacle I could find, just in case. I ran ice packs upstairs to my husband, fed the kids dinner, and looked up information on Google about dehydration and curbing vomiting. I also listened to the sounds of the storm, assessing when it was safe to let my dogs, who were increasingly pacing next to the door, out to relieve themselves without getting swept away like the cows in Twister.
Around 7, when I heard crashes from outside, and noticed the trees were trying to limbo each other, I heeded the warning to sleep downstairs, and set up Pack 'n Plays in the living room for the kids. My husband still couldn't move, but our bedroom is safely away from any big trees, so he stayed put. I collected a few blankets for myself, and a rogue pillow pet dragon, and situated myself on the couch, jumping distance from the girls' barracks. With my little ones safe, I emailed our business partners to let them know that we might not have power or internet by morning, sent off form letter outlines, instructions on how to deal with sign ups, and what workshops for our acting studio had low enrollment and might need special deals implemented.
I settled in for the night, and watched the news with the most honest interest I'd had in years. Pictures of waves crashing, streets and cars submerging, and idiotic reporters standing in evacuation zones, reminding people how unsafe it was for them to be there, lit up my screen. I fell asleep to word that the Battery Tunnel was flooding.
In the morning, I was greeted with a blank screen, no phone or internet, but thankfully, power. There were large branches and parts of trees down, but no damage to our cars or house. My family was reachable by cell phone, and while they had ALL lost power, they were safe. It would be two days before I saw video of the roller coaster at Sea Side rocking and rolling in the Atlantic surf, before I could get out of the house and assess the uprooted oak trees and buckled sidewalks. It would be five days before I was online, taking back my duties as online connoisseur for our business, and scrolling, awestruck, through news feeds to see the photo of a PATH station's elevator bursting with water from the Hudson, and Hoboken doing its best impression of Atlantis.
Seeing the images of people's homes devastated by the storm, hearing the war stories from friends who were stranded, and viewing our beloved Jersey barrier islands destroyed, I'm grateful we escaped relatively unscathed. The shore house is a family vacation home, and we're lucky to have it, but it's not our primary residence- it's the bonus for so many years of hard work that my stepdad put in to purchase it. It can be rebuilt. The people in my life are safe, and they are the irreplaceable ones.
I'm grateful to my school district for having the presence of mind to cancel school for a week so that we could return only when it is safe, as opposed to rushing amid downed electrical wires and trees to try to save an April break that seems a world away. I'm grateful to the power companies and cable guys who have been braving the gas lines and road warriors to restore electricity and reconnect us to our fellow web surfers. Most of all, I'm grateful for the kindness I'm seeing all around me, as people take in their friends, family, and neighbors and offer them beds, clean clothes, showers, and food.
It doesn't take much to be a superhero after a storm.
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