Category: hurricane

I like this quote, and it seems particularly fitting right now. I left work a little early on Tuesday to help my husband lock down our house as best as we could before Idalia came barreling in. We brought in all our potted and hanging plants, tucked away loose items like chairs into the shed or garage, prepped the generator, and then waited. And waited.

I had a hard time sleeping. My husband, on the other hand, shrugged and said, “We’ve done all we can do.” He was a lot calmer about it than I was. My brain juggled all the possible damages and injuries that could befall us during the storm, even when I tried to quiet it.

I ended up getting out of bed around 4:30 AM, stood at the dining room doors and watched the rain, waited for the 5 AM update on the National Hurricane Center. No luck: it was still heading straight for us.

My husband got up not long after, and I thought he would be irritated that I woke him up, but he didn’t say anything about it. We lined up flashlights, lanterns, and battery-operated fans on the kitchen counter for the inevitable loss of power…and waited.

The storm picked up around 8 AM, and then we lost power. I was in motion during the entire storm, stepping onto the front porch to assess the situation, slipping the curtain aside at the back door, jumping up every time I heard a pop, bang, thud. I checked on my cat, lured all the outdoor cats except one into the house, but I managed to convince that one to hang out behind a shelter of potted plants and a bench on our front porch. She nonchalantly watched the rain, looked irritated if the wind blew raindrops onto her fur, and was pleased when I presented her with a bowl of food to enjoy in what seemed like the only dry spot on the porch.

When it was obvious that the worst of the storm had passed, my husband came over to me, where I was surveying the mess in the backyard, and said, “I told you it wasn’t going to be that bad.” He pulled me playfully into his arms and kissed me, then added, “But you wouldn’t listen to me.”

The yard was littered with leaves and branches, and I said, “I guess we have some yard work to do now.”

My husband said, “And I will do it happily.”

I gave him an odd look, because hurricane clean-up is not all that fun, and he explained, “It will be hot, and it will take a lot of work, but we will do it together.”

In the meantime, though, it was still lightly raining, so yard work would have to wait. We set up our fans and stretched out on the bed together, relaxed now that the storm was over, and we had made it through. I hadn’t even realized how wound up I had been until I loosened up in his arms, rolling my eyes at his jokes about how stressed out I had been. I was grateful we had pulled through with no major damage, and I was thankful that we were together.

If you’ve never been trapped in a house with someone during a hurricane, with no power, no air conditioning, unable to go anywhere, you may not fully understand what a test of your relationship it can be. As soon as a storm passes, the sun comes out, and it becomes unbearably hot and humid…and you can’t turn on the a/c. Just walking across the room will leave you dripping with sweat.

We made the best of it. Once the rain stopped, we at least had a generator to keep the fridge cold and run fans to move air around, a griddle to fire up a late lunch. Later, when I decided it was too hot for pajamas, my husband joked that he kind of likes hurricanes now. When we turned off the lantern, I reached for him in the dark, wanting to be close to him even in the heat and humidity of a post-hurricane summer night.

We have weathered many storms, both literal and figurative, together. We will add this one as another notch on our score card, I suppose, and just keep moving on. There is no one else I would rather face — and triumph over — any storm with than him. Who else can say they actually had fun during a hurricane?